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THE CURRICULUM 
OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


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THE CURRICULUM OF 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


BY 
WILLIAM CLAYTON BOWER 


PROFESSOR OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN THE COLLEGE OF THE 
BIBLE, LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY 


OCT 10 1972 
PRINCETON TEDkGeta!  SUMINART 
NEW YORK 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1928 


CopyricuT, 1925, sy 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


Printed in the United States of America 





TO 
TROAS HEMRY BOWER 
MY WIFE 


WHOSE COMPANIONSHIP AND COUNSEL 
HAVE BEEN A CONSTANT SOURCE OF INSPIRATION 
AND SUSTAINING HELP IN ALL MY WORK 





PREFACE 


Next to the child, the curriculum lies nearest the 
centre of the educative process. Every change in 
the conception of the end and nature of education 
has registered its influence in the curriculum more 
profoundly than in any other factor. This is in- 
creasingly apparent in modern educational theory. 
The problems arising out of objectives, method of 
procedure, the organization of the institution, and 
the function of the teacher lead, in one way or an- 
other, to the central problem of the curriculum. 

At no point does the present reconstruction 
through which education is passing necessitate a 
more thoroughgoing readjustment of educational 
theory and procedure than in the field of the cur- 
riculum. In the present discussion the author has 
taken account of the more recent significant move- 
ments in the theory and practice of education and 
has attempted to carry out their implications as 
they bear upon the curriculum in religious educa- 
tion. 

The curriculum is here conceived in terms of en- 
riched and controlled experience. This view is at the 
farthest possible remove from that which has domi- 
nated traditional education. The traditional view 
has placed materials at the centre of the process; 
the view here presented places experience at the 
centre. Knowledge has been dominantly thought 
of as an end in itself; it is here thought of as an in- 
strument for the enrichment and control of experi- 
ence. 

vil 


Vili PREFACE 


Fundamental as is the problem of the relation of 
knowledge to experience in any field of education, 
it is particularly fundamental in moral and religious 
education. If moral and religious education are to 
be effective in their influence upon human life, they 
must enter experience as factors of control. That is 
to say, morals and religion cannot be taught apart 
from experience. As bodies of ideas and precepts 
dissociated from every-day relations and functions 
there is no assurance that they will function in the 
redirection of conduct in conformity with the high- 
est ethical and spiritual ideals of the race. Until a 
way can be found for the teaching of morals and 
religion as a part of the experience of normal life 
there must remain a doubt as to the practicability 
of teaching morals or religion at all. Whatever view 
secular education may take regarding the procedure 
appropriate to the teaching of those matters that 
are deemed necessary for the preparation of imma- 
ture persons to take their part in the secular state, 
religious education has no choice but to press its 
theory and practice through to a point where they 
begin and end in experience. How this may be ac- 
complished seems to the present writer to offer the 
most immediate and pressing problem now before 
the religious educator and the most promising field 
for his research. 

The curriculum of religious education is at the 
present moment in a state of transition. There is 
general agreement that existing curriculum materials 
are not satisfactory, especially in the light of the 
new demands that are being made upon religious 
education. There is also a wide-spread conviction 
that the creation of new curriculum materials must 
proceed upon an entirely new basis. Already ex- 


PREFACE ix 


periments on new materials based upon new ap- 
proaches to the problem of curriculum-building are 
under way, but these materials are for the most part 
not yet available. Any confident creation of cur- 
riculum materials on the new basis must be preceded 
by patient research and wide-spread experimenta- 
tion. In view of the status of the curriculum prob- 
lem in religious education it has seemed best to 
limit the present discussion to a statement of a 
theory of the curriculum, believing that the first 
step in the creation of a new curriculum should be 
a clear understanding of the problems involved and 
as clear a statement as possible of the principles 
upon which the new curriculum should rest. 

The author wishes to acknowledge his indebted- 
ness to those who have discussed the problem of the 
curriculum in recent years, especially to Professor 
Franklin Bobbitt, Professor Junius L. Meriam, Pro- 
fessor W. W. Charters, and Professor John Dewey. 
He wishes also to express his appreciation of the 
constructive criticisms that members of the Com- 
mittee on The International Curriculum of Religious 
Education, a subcommittee of the International Les- 
son Committee, and that members of its Advisory 
Committee, have given to a brief statement of a 
theory of the curriculum which he, as chairman of 
the subcommittee, submitted to it as a working 
basis for the construction of a new integrated cur- 
riculum to cover week-day, vacation, and Sunday 
instruction. W. CB. 


Lexineton, Kentucky, 
April 6, 1925. 


ay 
* 


DNR re ee ais PEA) Ka. 





CONTENTS 


PREFACE 


CHAPTER 
I. Tue Curricutum AS DISCIPLINE 


Il. Tue Curricutum AS KNOWLEDGE 
Ill. Ture Curricutum As RECAPITULATION 


IV. Tue Curricutum AS ENRICHED AND Con- 
TROLLED EXPERIENCE 


VY. Tue WortsH or PRESENT EXPERIENCE 
VI. Tur Nature or EXPERIENCE . 


Vil. How EXpsEriIENcE 18s ENRICHED AND Con- 
TROLLED 


VIII. Tue Oricin anp Function or KNOWLEDGE 
IX. Tue Princrpie or REALITY 
X. THE PRINCIPLE oF CONTINUITY 
XI. Wuat Constitutes THE CURRICULUM 

XII. Tue ANAtysis or EXPERIENCE 

XIII. Huistoricay Sussect-Mattrer . 


XIV. Meruop as Wipeninc EXPERIENCE 
Xi 


120 
134 
147 
163 
180 
194 


207 


CONTENTS 


Reuicious Epucation TurovucH Socran 
PARTICIPATION 


Tue Princiete oF ADAPTATION 


A Dynamic CuRRICULUM 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


INDEX . y : if x ‘ A 


PAGE 


THE CURRICULUM 
OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


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THE CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS 
EDUCATION 


I 
THE CURRICULUM AS DISCIPLINE 


MopeErRN education, like all social functions, is the 
result of development through a long historical 
process. Education is as old as the race. It began 
when primitive men initiated the immature mem- 
bers of their group into the practical processes by 
which their life was sustained and into the sacred 
mysteries of the tribe. At the beginning the proc- 
ess was scarcely conscious. There was no differen- 
tiated teaching class. There were no consciously 
formulated objectives. There was no technic that 
called for special preparation and professional skill. 
There was no specialized teaching institution corre- 
sponding to the modern school. Since there could 
be no considerable body of cumulative experience 
because there was as yet no written language, there 
could be no considerable body of recorded and or- 
ganized historical subject-matter. Notwithstanding, 
education went on in a simple but very real way 
through the participation of the immature in the 
practical activities of the group. Because the re- 
corded racial experience was extremely meagre, 
being limited to custom and oral tradition, only in 
the most limited sense can it be said to have been 
backward-looking, since it had only a meagre past; 
1 


2 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


because it had not as yet learned the secret of con- 
trol through the understanding of the forces and 
processes of the world about it, it could not yet be- 
come forward-looking. Consequently, primitive edu- 
cation was bound to a relatively unchanging present. 

From these simple and crude beginnings until now 
the mature members of society have been assisting 
the immature members in making their adjustment 
to the world in which they are to live in the interest 
of a happy, effective, and satisfying life. Modern 
education has become a highly conscious, complex, 
and purposive undertaking. Its objectives are be- 
coming increasingly clearly and definitely defined, 
both from the standpoint of the individual and of 
society. It has developed an elaborate technic that 
requires for its successful administration the ser- 
vices of a highly trained professional class. Through 
writing and printing it has accumulated a vast store 
of historical subject-matter that is a faithful record 
of man’s expanding experience in countless areas of 
tireless exploration. Man has had sufficient expe- 
rience in dealing with the forces and processes around 
and within him to acquire some understanding of 
these forces and processes and thereby to bring 
them under a measure of control. In this way he 
has built up a confidence in himself that he can, in 
a measure, anticipate the course of future expe- 
rience and within certain limits control it. With the 
birth within man of this confidence, education has 
become forward-looking. A self-conscious and self- 
directing society erects goals for itself and deliber- 
ately sets about attempting to realize them. Under 
the impulsion of these ideas education has become 
the most fundamental undertaking of modern so- 
ciety. Upon it society places its chief dependence 


THE CURRICULUM AS DISCIPLINE 3 


as an instrument for social direction, and as the 
fundamental method of securing progress. 

In the course of its development from its simple 
and primitive to its complex and modern character 
education has passed through countless changes. 
Now its objectives have been restated to correspond 
to the changing values of the social group. Now its 
procedure has been reconstructed to meet the de- 
mands of a developing technic. Now its emphasis 
has shifted from the learner to materials and from 
materials to method in its search for the permanent 
centre of the educative process. However great 
these historic changes have been, there has never 
been a period in which education has passed through 
a more thoroughgoing reconstruction than it is 
passing through at the present time. Its aims, pro- 
cedure, materials, and organization—all these are 
undergoing a searching process of revaluation in the 
light of the demands which the modern social, in- 
tellectual, and spiritual necessities of our times are 
making upon it. 

Of the factors that constitute the educative proc- 
ess, none so completely registers changes in the the- 
ory and practice of education as the curriculum. So 
true is this that it would be all but possible to write 
the history of education in terms of the changing 
conception, content, and organization of the cur- 
riculum. Modern education has come to regard the 
child as the permanent centre of the educative proc- 
ess. The child is the one factor that, through all 
changes that have modified the other factors, re- 
mains relatively stable. But when it comes to the 
actual formulation and management of educational 
procedure, each of the problems, in one way or an- 
other, leads straight to the curriculum. One is not 


4 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


surprised, therefore, to discover that at the very 
centre of the present reconstruction through which 
education is passing lies the problem of the cur- 
riculum. 

It will be helpful, therefore, to orient ourselves to 
the problem of the curriculum as it stands in mod- 
ern religious education by a brief sketch of the more 
outstanding features of the historical theories of the 
curriculum. Speaking quite broadly, it may be said 
that these conceptions fall into a rough historical 
sequence, though there is much chronological over- 
lapping. For the most part the conscious and ra- 
tional elaboration of these theories falls within the 
modern period, though they have many antecedents 
in the ancient and medieval worlds. For this reason 
it will serve the present purpose if the survey is for 
the most part limited to the period since the Renais- 
sance. 

The first of these historical theories to receive our 
attention will be the conception of the curriculum 
as discipline. 5 
~ The theory of the curriculum as discipline had its 
origin in the social and intellectual backgrounds of 
the seventeenth century. One of the phenomena 
with which the student of the history of education 
is early impressed is the way in which social ideals, 
relations, and processes become articulate in educa- 
tion. The Europe of the fifteenth to the nineteenth 
centuries inherited many of its pattern ideas and its 
social structure from the Middle Ages. The spirit 
of the Middle Ages in religion, in thought, and in 
social organization had been authoritative and re- 
pressive. The signature of the period from the fifth 
to the fifteenth centuries had been authority and 
discipline. Notwithstanding the fact that the Re- 


THE CURRICULUM AS DISCIPLINE 5 


naissance and the Reformation were at bottom re- 
actions against that authority, the old attitudes and 
structures continued to survive with persistent stub-: 
bornness. The opportunity for the common man to 
exist, to think, and to act in his own right is a 
late achievement of the modern world. That right 
has not yet been completely won. In the autocratic 
social organization of Europe, for a long time after 
the Renaissance, the few by a jealously guarded au- 
thority imposed their will from above upon the 
many. The qualities of mind that befitted such a 
political state, such a church, and such an intellec- 
tual life were submission, obedience, resignation. 
And these were precisely those qualities of mind 
that a disciplinary education of an authoritative 
state and church obtained. 

On the intellectual side, a number of factors con- 
tributed to the rational elaboration of the theory. 
For one thing, the Renaissance had developed two 
fundamental interests—an interest in persons and 
an interest in nature. The first of these gave rise to 
humanism, the latter to naturalism. Humanism was 
the first to emerge. It developed an intense inter- 
est in the life of the ancients as revealed in the 
classical literatures. At first the classics were studied 
for the sake of their rich and satisfying content and 
for the light they were capable of throwing upon the 
life of the ancients. Presently, however, a formal- 
izing tendency settled down upon the movement, 
and it became narrow and rigid. Interest was shifted 
from the content of the classics to the languages 
themselves. It became an enthusiasm with the 
classicists to speak and write in the exact forms of 
the ancient masters. The schools became devoted 
wholly to a study of the form of the classics. 


6 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


In the meantime the naturalistic tendency began 
to emerge. It was slightly preceded by the so-called 
‘realistic’? movement that protested against the 
exclusively formal study of the classics. The earli- 
est realists still adhered to the classics as the media 
of education, but they insisted that the classics 
should be studied for the value of their content. 
Some realists, Montaigne for instance, even went so 
far as to repudiate the classics altogether. But it 
was the sense-realists who broke completely with 
the classicists. Chief among these were Francis 
Bacon and Comenius. Bacon was the precursor of 
the scientists. His interest centred wholly in na- 
ture—in its phenomena, forces, processes. He even 
dreamed that sometime man would be able to con- 
trol nature. The work of Bacon necessitated a new 
philosophy of knowledge and a new method of edu- 
cation. Comenius was quick to seize upon these 
implications and elaborated a theory of knowledge 
based upon sense-perception and a philosophy of 
education which called for the use of concrete ob- 
jects and natural processes in teaching. He com- 
pletely discarded the classics as instruments of in- 
struction, and worked out a system of instruction 
by means of concrete objects from nature and by 
means of pictures. Neither was the impact of real- 
ism upon the prevalent education slight. It got it- 
self expressed in the so-called “‘real schools” of 
Germany, and later made its influence distinctly felt 
in America. 

At the same time profound social changes were 
taking place in Europe. While the Renaissance in 
the south of Europe had been aristocratic, the Ref- 
ormation, which was a continuation of the same 
general movement in the north of Europe, was so- 


THE CURRICULUM AS DISCIPLINE 4 


cial and democratic. Its interest centred more in 
the life of the common man. In religion it affirmed 
the competency of the individual soul, irrespective 
of an authoritative institution, to stand before God 
and its fellows in its own right. It made the indi- 
vidual reason the judge of truth and the individual 
conscience the arbiter of conduct. In the interest 
of these social and democratic ideals the Reforma- 
tion established state systems of schools and made 
attendance upon them compulsory. This brought 
the rights and privileges of education to every man. 

With the emergence of the common man a rich 
life sprang up among the common people which ex- 
pressed itself in a literature in the vernacular. In 
time Latin ceased to be universally used as the Jan- 
guage of religion, and French became the official 
language of the court and of diplomatic circles. 

Against these powerful movements the traditional 
education found it necessary to defend its insecure 
position. It was forced to formulate a philosophy 
of education that would justify the continuance of 
the disciplinary methods of education and the ex- 
clusive use of the classics. It found its chief rational 
exponent in John Locke, the English philosopher, 
who formulated the conception of the curriculum as 
discipline in the latter part of the seventeenth 
century. 

The disciplinary conception of the curriculum was 
founded upon a view of human nature that required 
the thwarting of its natural desires. The virtue of 
virtues was self-denial. If a thing was hard or dis- 
tasteful because it ran counter to the impulses of 
original nature, that was sufficient reason for doing 
it; if it was easy or agreeable, that in itself was 
sufficient reason for avoiding it. Original nature 


8 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


must be thwarted at every point by a subordinating 
and hardening process. Only thus could it be brought 
under the rule of reason and authority. It is not 
difficult, of course, to trace the roots of this concep- 
tion. They lie embedded in the historic doctrine of 
original sin, which had its origin in the attitude of 
world- and self-renunciation in the negative re- 
action of Christianity to the Greco-Roman world. 
This was the conception that dominated the point 
of view of the Middle Ages. Human nature was 
essentially wrong and must be subjected to a process 
of radical reconstruction. 

The disciplinary theory was based upon the tra- 
ditional “‘faculty”’ psychology. According to this 
view, the mind was made up of a number of isolated 
*‘faculties,’ such as perception, memory, imagina- 
tion, and reasoning. In any given activity only its 
corresponding faculty was supposed to be engaged, 
and no other. Thus, if one were engaged in perceiv- 
ing the form or color of an object, only the faculty 
of perception would be engaged. Consequently it 
was believed that if one faculty were trained in any 
given activity it would, by exercise, acquire a cor- 
responding ability when turned to any other ac- 
tivity. In this way it was held, for example, that 
if the faculty of perception were trained in discern- 
ing noun or verb endings in declension or conjuga- 
tion it would acquire skill in detecting the symp- 
toms of disease or in discriminating between differ- 
ences of form or color. Similarly, if memory were 
trained in mastering word forms or a vocabulary it 
would profit by that training in remembering names 
or localities; or if the reason were trained in the 
solving of mathematical problems it would be better 
able to meet the practical problems of life. It was 


THE CURRICULUM AS DISCIPLINE 9 


also believed that in addition to a carry-over of 
training from one field to another there was built 
up through the exercise of one faculty, or a few 
faculties, a general store of mental energy that 
would make the mind more effective in any form of 
activity whatsoever. 

From this point of view it followed that the value 
of education consisted, not in the worth of the thing 
learned, but in the process of learning it. It also 
followed that the highest benefit from education 
came from training within a very narrow field of 
activity, since such limited training could be more 
intense and thorough. The training of specific facul- 
ties in specialized directions could be trusted to 
carry over into other activities, and the mental 
energy created by the exercise of a limited number 
of faculties could be trusted to diffuse itself over the 
other faculties of the entire mind. There was no 
need, therefore, that the training given should have 
any relation whatsoever to the relations and func- 
tions of real life or that it should be diversified in 
order to anticipate those divergent needs. Educa- 
tion had performed its function when it had devel- 
oped within the mind that energy that might be 
drawn upon for any need. The president of a great 
American university who held this view of the cur- 
riculum likened education to a workman grinding 
his axe. 

Since the value of education consisted in the proc- 
ess of learning rather than in the thing learned, the 
subjects that were judged most valuable were the 
formal and difficult subjects. If a subject was dis- 
tasteful as well as difficult, it was particularly ap- 
propriate. 

The effect of the disciplinary theory upon the cur- 


10 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


riculum was thoroughgoing. During the period of 
its dominance nothing else was taught in the schools 
that were brought under its influence but Latin 
and Greek grammar and composition and, in many 
instances, mathematics. Moreover, this extremely 
narrow curriculum was rigidly prescribed. The prin- 
ciple of election is based upon individual interests 
and the bearing of certain subjects upon the ex- 
pected future activities of the student. But from 
the disciplinary point of view, interest should be 
repressed, and nothing was to be gained by diffused 
training in relation to future activities, since the 
narrow and more intense training was believed to 
be more effective in creating a fund of mental energy. 

The effect of the disciplinary theory upon the 
spirit of the school was no Jess thoroughgoing. The 
atmosphere of the school was harsh and repressive. 
Learning became a formal, external, and authorita- 
tive process with no vital and intrinsic interest. 
Consequently, the motivation of learning had to be 
sought in the external incentives of reward and pun- 
ishment, the latter often being carried to the limits 
of cruelty. 

Owing largely to the fact that the traditional edu- 
cation was in possession of the technic and machin- 
ery of education and to the inertia of custom, the 
classicists prevailed. The disciplinary conception of 
the curriculum dominated the schools of England, 
the Continent, and America through the eighteenth 
and nineteenth centuries. Remnants of its influence 
continued well on into the twentieth century. Until 
the middle of the nineteenth century nothing was 
taught in the English public schools, such as Eton, 
Rugby, and Winchester, but Latin and Greek gram- 
mar and composition; only then was mathematics 


THE CURRICULUM AS DISCIPLINE li 


added. Oxford and Cambridge have remained 
throughout rigidly disciplinary institutions. On the 
Continent the German gymnasium, the central and 
most typical school in the German system, was, as 
its name suggests, wholly under the domination of 
this conception. The German universities were 
slow to yield to the influence of realism. The Latin 
Grammar School of the early colonies embodied this 
point of view in America. Until very recently the 
elementary schools in America were dominated by 
disciplinary ideals. In both Europe and America 
such content subjects as history, literature, and the 
natural and social sciences have had to win their 
way by a patient and persistent struggle in the face 
of the strong entrenchment of the disciplinary sub- 
jects. 

There were fundamental weaknesses in the disci- 
plinary conception of the curriculum that have led 
to its decay in modern education. For one thing, 
modern scientific psychology has cut the ground 
from beneath the “faculty” conception of the mind. 
It finds that the mind is a unit and that it operates 
as a unit in the different directions of its activity. 
Modern psychology thinks in terms of capacities 
and functions. With the disappearance of isolated 
faculties the disciplinary conception of the curric- 
ulum falls to the ground. 

Furthermore, modern psychology has come to 
disbelieve in the doctrine of the transfer of training. 
Laboratory experiments have demonstrated that 
training in one activity improves ability in another 
activity only under three well-defined conditions. 
The first condition is that there must be common 
elements of content in the two types of activity, as 
in the learning of Latin and French. The second is 


12 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


that there must be common elements of procedure 
between the two activities, as in mastering a cer- 
tain technic in memorizing, such as learning by 
wholes, the proper distribution of practice periods, 
and the use of recall. The third condition is that 
the element that is to be carried over must be raised 
clearly into consciousness so that it will be reflected 
upon. Under these conditions the modern educator 
is not sure that there is any carry-over as such, but 
only the direct training of capacities in their respec- 
tive lines of activity. If there is a carry-over, it is 
upon precisely the opposite grounds from that as- 
sumed by the disciplinarian. Such carry-over as 
may exist depends upon the widening of the range 
of training and the relation of training to the pres- 
ent and future activities of the learner. 

Thus the conception of the curriculum as dis- 
cipline, which emerged from the social and intellec- 
tual backgrounds of the seventeenth century and 
fastened itself upon education until its decay under 
the influence of modern social ideals and scientific 
psychology, placed the supreme emphasis, in the 
historical development of education, upon the proc- 
ess of learning as distinguished from subject-matter 
or the child. 


if 
THE CURRICULUM AS KNOWLEDGE 


NOTWITHSTANDING the fact that we owe the rational 
formulation of the conception of the curriculum as 
knowledge to Herbart during the latter part of the 
eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
turies, it is the oldest of all the historical concepts 
of the curriculum, as it is also the most persistent. 
This is obviously due to the fact that the curriculum 
in any case deals largely with a knowledge content, 
and both theory and practice have shown a ten- 
dency to gravitate toward that centre. 

The conception of the curriculum as knowledge 
goes back, historically, to the beginning of the ex- 
perience of the race. Circumscribed as primitive 
man’s experience was, he nevertheless learned by 
a crude trial-and-error method many useful things 
as a result of his dealing with such situations as 
his material and social world presented to him. It 
was long before primitive man developed the art of 
writing through the use of symbols. In the mean- 
time, such practical knowledge as he learned about 
hunting, hut-building, the making of clothing, and 
weapons was passed on from generation to genera- 
tion by example and oral tradition. In time, by the 
use of pictograph signs, inscribed at first upon the 
bones or skins of animals, primitive man devised 
a written language by means of which he could re- 
cord his experience and communicate with his fel- 
lows without being present with them. In this way 

13 


14 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


there was gradually accumulated a store of perma- 
nent knowledge. 

The effect of written language upon the curric- 
ulum was fundamental and far-reaching. In the 
earliest education the curriculum consisted of the 
elements that entered into the practical processes 
of food-getting, providing shelter, and conducting 
warfare as these were learned from participating 
with the mature members of the group in these ac- 
tivities, together with what the old men of the 
tribe communicated to the young regarding religious 
ceremonies and the sacred mysteries of the tribe. 
With the invention of written language this knowl- 
edge was recorded and preserved for future genera- 
tions. As a result, as time passed, the learner was 
directed to these records for knowledge. In this 
way education developed into a more or less formal © 
process. There was gradually differentiated a teach- 
ing class that was versed in this lore and capable of 
imparting it to others. Schools sprang up, at first 
in the temple areas and in the private houses of the 
teachers, where pupils congregated for the purposes 
of learning. Experience in the impartation of knowl- 
edge gave rise to a teaching technic. For a consid- 
erable time the subject-matter was practical and 
professional, as in Egypt. In some instances it be- 
came exclusively literary, as in China. In any 
case, education became, on the part of the teacher, 
a transmission of the inheritance of the past and, 
on the part of the learner, an assimilation of that 
inheritance. Education had become instruction. 

The reaction of this growing body of knowledge 
upon the earlier historic forms of education was 
profound and characteristic. It had the effect of 
placing an almost exclusive emphasis upon the past. 


THE CURRICULUM AS KNOWLEDGE 15 


Society became backward-looking. Progress was 
slow and uncertain and was achieved for the most 
part in spite of education. This result was well illus- 
trated in the Egyptian civilization, which, under the 
influence of its growing traditional inheritance, be- 
came formulaic, authoritative, and bound to its 
past. Its supreme expression was to be found in 
China, where for centuries education became ex- 
clusively literary, formal, and backward-looking. 
China’s extreme reverence for the past furnished 
the most conspicuous instance in history of the 
power of education to render a society resistant to 
change and therefore incapable of the progressive 
achievement of progress. Its reaction upon the na- 
tional mind was to destroy initiative and develop 
the attitudes of appreciation and dependence upon 
precedent. 

As has been suggested, the conception of the cur- 
riculum as knowledge owes its rational formulation 
to Herbart and his disciples in the later eighteenth 
and early nineteenth centuries. The earlier concep- 
tion of the curriculum as knowledge rested upon a 
wholly empirical basis. Not so with Herbart and 
his followers. Herbart himself was thoroughly 
trained in the university, and was later a professor 
of philosophy. His whole approach to the problem 
was that of the best philosophical and psychological 
learning of his day. 

Herbart had the advantage of being acquainted 
with the ideas and experience of Pestalozzi. Pes- 
talozzi’s educational work was all done on a purely 
empirical basis. Herbart took over Pestalozzi’s ex- 
periments in education and reduced them to a con- 
scious psychological procedure. At the same time 
he carried them to a higher level than his prede- 


16 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


cessor in that he lifted the process from the level of 
sense-perception to the realm of ideas. 

Herbart broke completely with the traditional 
“faculty”? psychology upon which the disciplinary 
conception of the curriculum had been formulated. 
He saw the mind as a unity, functioning as a whole 
in different directions. That is, when one is en- 
gaged in solving a mathematical problem, the entire 
mind is engaged at that moment in that particular 
act. So also when one engages in a game of golf or 
tennis or in delivering a lecture or in selling mer- 
chandise, it is the whole mind functioning as a 
unit that is involved, and not an isolated “faculty” 
such as memory, reason, or imagination. In this 
respect Herbart anticipated the findings of modern 
scientific psychology. In this way Herbart laid the 
groundwork of theory for much of the modern 
thinking regarding the ends and means of education. 

The distinctive psychological position of Herbart 
consisted in the fact that he saw in the mind a prod- 
uct to be formed as the result of the operation of 
factors external to the learner. To him the mind at 
birth was a blank sheet of paper upon which nothing 
had yet been written. The character of the mind, 
therefore, was determined by what was later written 
thereon, and by the manner in which it was written. 
This was the basic psychological assumption upon 
which he erected his theory of education. 

In Herbart’s view, the process by which the mind 
was formed was through the proper presentation 
of subject-matter. Mind consisted of an indefinite 
number of connections between bits of knowledge. 
Both the content and the pattern of the mind, in 
consequence, depended upon the amount and char- 
acter of presentations of subject-matter. It would 


THE CURRICULUM AS KNOWLEDGE Ly: 


be impossible to imagine a conception that would 
place more emphasis upon knowledge as such. It 
amounted to the complete shifting of emphasis from 
the child, so far as the child had up to that time 
been considered, to subject-matter. This replace- 
ment of emphasis necessitated the complete recon- 
struction of the technic of instruction as far as the 
Herbartian influence extended. The formation of 
mind was thus reduced to a matter of content. For 
his subject-matter Herbart went to two fundamental 
sources—nature and social relations. Thus in him 
the two fundamental interests of the Renaissance— 
humanism and naturalism—were united. There was 
no restriction of the area from which knowledge 
suitable for educational purposes could be drawn. 
Since the manner of the presentation of subject- 
matter was of such fundamental importance, an 
emphasis second only to that placed upon content 
was placed upon method. The primary basis of this 
emphasis arose out of Herbart’s doctrine of inter- 
est, which rested, in his view, upon the apperceptive 
function of the mind, by which new experience is 
assimilated with the old. With Herbart, that only 
can be interesting to the learner ‘which is in some 
way connected with knowledge already in his mind. 
A correlative of this conception was the doctrine 
that the result of education should be the creation 
of certain organized and permanent interests. It 
was out of the doctrine of interest that he formu- 
lated his technic of the effective presentation of 
subject-matter. This technic consisted in his “‘five 
formal steps in teaching.” According to this formula, — 


the first step in instruction consisted in the prepara- ( 


tion of the mind for the reception of the new knowl ~ 
edge. This preparation consisted in calling up the 


1) 


18 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


knowledge already in the mind that was related to 
the new material about to be presented. This old 
experience he called the “apperceptive mass.’”’ The 
second step consisted in the clear and impressive 
presentation of the new knowledge. The third step 
required the working of the new material thoroughly 
into the knowledge already present in the mind 
through a sort of kneading process. The fourth step 
consisted in the arriving of the learner at correct 
generalizations and the attachment thereto of their 
appropriate definitions. The final step consisted in 


- the application of the newly acquired knowledge in 


new and unfamiliar situations. This latter step is 
the basis of the so-called “‘expressional” work in 
modern teaching. It gave rise to the dictum, “No 
impression without expression.’’ So perfectly was 
this method worked out by Herbart that experience 
in using it through a long period of time has added 
no new step, unless perhaps it might be that of veri- 
fication, between generalization and application, if 
it is assumed that the business of education is to 
transmit knowledge from teacher to pupil. 

A second basis upon which the Herbartian method 
rested was the doctrine of correlation. Since the 
mind was formed through the presentation of in- 
teresting subject-matter and the building up of 
permanent interests, it followed that these inter- 
ests must be harmonized. This Herbart sought to 
accomplish through the presentation of subject- 
matter from related and complementary fields. It 
fell out, therefore, that the subject-matter that was 
appropriate to any particular learner would be de- 
termined, not by an unrestricted range of knowledge, 
but by the selection of those bodies of knowledge 
that were capable of harmoniously relating them- 
selves to each other. 


THE CURRICULUM AS KNOWLEDGE 19 


From the Herbartian point of view, human nature 
can be neither good nor bad, since its quality is de- 
pendent upon the presentations of subject-matter 
that are made to it. Furthermore, since these pres- 
entations are made from without, the primary re- 
sponsibility for character formation rests with those 
who are responsible for the selection and presenta- 
tion of knowledge. 

In keeping with these fundamental viewpoints, 
those who have followed the lead of Herbart have 
characteristically placed the primary emphasis in 
education upon subject-matter. President Nicholas 
Murray Butler, one of the leading living represen- 
tatives of this conception of education, has defined 
education as the gradual adjustment of the immature 
to the spiritual possessions of the race. He classifies 
the spiritual inheritance of the race under the cate- 
gories of the scientific, literary, sesthetic, institu- 
tional (politico-social), industrial, and religious. 

Partly because of the thoroughness and exactness 
with which the theory was worked out on a psycho- 
logical basis, and partly because of the tendency of 
the curriculum to gravitate toward subject-matter, 
the influence of the Herbartian ideals was very 
wide-spread. They have increasingly displaced the 
disciplinary conception of the curriculum. One after 
another of the content subjects has won its way 
into the curriculum until at the present time the 
curriculum is embarrassed by a wealth and scope 
of subject-matter. Under the elective system, which, 
among other things, is one of the outgrowths of the 
enrichment of the curriculum, the curriculum has 
shown a tendency toward diffusion and scattering 
to the point of disorganization and superficiality. 
The reaction from the results of free election has 


20 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


followed in some measure the principle suggested by 
Herbart—the selection of a general field of corre- 
lated and homogeneous studies out of the growing 
mass of modern knowledge, which it is impossible 
for one mind to master in a lifetime. Current edu- 
cation is predominantly Herbartian. 

Great as were the contributions of the Herbar- 
tians in displacing the “faculty” psychology with 
a sounder view of the character of the mind and in 
working out on a psychological basis a technic for 
the impartation of knowledge, the conception of the 
curriculum that derives from them is open to serious 
criticism in the light of scientific psychology and the 
increasing demands of modern life. 

For one thing, it places knowledge at the centre 
of the learning process. This has amounted to the 
identification of education with instruction. For 
this reason, while it speaks in terms of adjustment, 
its focus of attention is wrongly centred. It would 
make education consist in adjustment to the in- 
heritance of the race. But this is precisely what 
education ought not to be. Education should be an 
adjustment to the present situations which the ma- 
terial and social world presents through the aid of 
the past experience of the race, and to the future 
that springs from the present as consequent from 
antecedent. The adjustment which this conception 
of the curriculum seeks is to materials, whereas it 
should be an adjustment to the actual situations of 
an ongoing human life. 

_ It has also given undue emphasis to the teacher 

with his technic as the representative of the adult 
members of society. This unduly weights the prog- 
ress of the race with tradition, precedent, fixed ideas, 
custom. It tends to close the avenues to fresh and 


THE CURRICULUM AS KNOWLEDGE 21 


vital experience, by means of which the life of the 
race is kept open and dynamic. 

On the whole it may be said that the influence of | 
this conception has been to create a backward-look- 
ing type of mind. The mental attitudes that it has 
developed have been those of passivity, authority, 
appreciation—the receptive qualities of the mind. 
Scientific psychology, however, insists upon the 
active, dynamic, creative character of the mind. 
The task that confronts society and its particular 
institutions is to build its own future by placing 
direction into the process of human living. This calls 
for the dynamic spirit and the creative and respon- 
sible mind. In keeping with this result, those func- 
tions of the mind that this view of education has 
especially developed are those that centre around 
memory at the expense of thinking and responsible 
experimentation with the possibilities of life. 

The conception of the curriculum as knowledge 
has received great impetus since the middle of the 
nineteenth century from the natural and the social 
sciences. This influence began as far back as the 
early seventeenth century with Francis Bacon. 
Bacon formulated many of the fundamental view- 
points and approaches of science. As we have seen, 
from the realism of Bacon there arose a new theory 
of knowledge and a new philosophy of education. 
It is significant that as a result of this earliest 
emergence of the scientific method in modern times 
there was born a Utopian dream that through the 
new method of learning it would be possible for 
the common man to know in a brief time all the 
useful knowledge in the possession of the race. It 
is also significant that the same movement of sci- 
ence that gave rise to the “‘pansophic”’ ideal has 


22 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


since then added to the store of verified knowledge 
in countless realms vaster volumes of material than 
any one individual or any one generation can hope 
to master. 

The movement of modern natural science has 
only accentuated the spirit of its precursor, realism. 
Into one after another of the areas of human expe- 
rience science has ventured far. Science, as its name 
suggests, has its beginning and end in knowledge. 
As a result, the total influence of science, except 
perhaps within recent years in the field of psychol- 
ogy, has been to accentuate the importance of 
knowledge, not only for its own sake, but for its 
serviceability, through the applied sciences, in min- 
istering to the needs and desires of mankind. 

The influence of the social sciences has, in the 
main, been in the same direction. The whole ten- 
dency of the social sciences has been to place a new 
value upon knowledge as an instrument of social 
living. Social thinkers have been inclined to value 
those forms of knowledge that make for survival— 
health, economic efficiency, and effective citizen- 
ship. After these more useful bodies of knowledge 
have been acquired, if time and energy remain, at- 
tention may be devoted to such knowledge as makes 
for enjoyment and culture. In consequence, the 
social determinants have crowded the curriculum 
with civic, vocational, economic, and health edu- 
cation. 

In this respect the effects of the natural and the 
social sciences fused. This fusion is well represented 
in Herbert Spencer, who united in himself the scien- 
tific terest and the social interest. It was he who 
first in the history of education specifically raised 
_ the question: “What knowledge is of most worth?” 


THE CURRICULUM AS KNOWLEDGE 23 


In answer to this question he arranged the subjects | 
of the curriculum in a hierarchy of values. In the 
order of first importance he placed a knowledge of 
physiology, hygiene, physics, and chemistry, for the , 
reason that these contribute directly to self-preser- 
vation. In the second order he placed a knowledge 
of how to secure food, clothing, and shelter, because 
they indirectly contribute to self-preservation. In 
the third order he placed such knowledge as has to 
do with the rearing of children. In the fourth order 
he placed a knowledge of social and political life, 
leaving for the last place literature, art, zesthetics, 
and foreign languages. Clearly we have here not 
only an emphasis upon knowledge that surpasses 
any that has presented itself in educational history, 
but a thoroughgoing utilitarian conception of knowl- 
edge. : 

Thus we see that from the beginning until the 
present time the conception of the curriculum as 
knowledge has persisted throughout in one form or 
another. At first it was the result of the unreflecting 
adherence of the group to the experience of the past 
as that experience was preserved in literary forms. 
In its later development it was the result of a philo- 
sophic and psychological interest that elaborated a 
philosophy of education and a careful technic for 
transmitting the accumulated inheritance of the 
past. In its latest development it is the result of 
the discovery of important scientific data that are 
also useful for the prosecution of the enterprise of 
individual and social living. And this conception is 
the conception that on the whole dominates both 
secular and religious education at the present time. 


III 
THE CURRICULUM AS RECAPITULATION 


TuE two outstanding contributions of the nineteenth 
century to civilization were the emergence of sci- 
ence and the industrialization of society. During 
this period the groundwork was laid for the modern 
natural and social sciences. The elaboration of the 
sciences resulted not only in the organization of vast 
bodies of verified knowledge but in the working out 
of a new attitude toward the facts of life and a new 
method of dealing with them, to be known hence- 
forth as the scientific attitude and the scientific 
method. Though the sciences began with the ob- 
servation, classification, and interpretation of facts 
through processes of induction and verification, they 
presently carried the application of these principles 
into the field of practical enterprises for the ameliora- 
tion and improvement of the conditions of human 
living. 

By far the most dynamic of these sciences in its 
influence upon the intellectual patterns of the mod- 
ern world was that of. biology. This science raised 
the question as to the origin of species and the 
processes involved in their continuation and devel- 
opment. It was from biology that the doctrine of 
evolution emerged as a hypothesis to account for 
the origin and development of life. Geology came 
to the aid of biology in offering its evidence of the 
changes that have taken place in the structure of 
the earth and in yielding up its faithful record of the 
history of organic changes in its fossil remains. 

24 


THE CURRICULUM AS RECAPITULATION 25 


Once the doctrine of evolution had established it- 
self in the area of organic life, it was not long until 
its implications began to appear in cosmic relations. 
The universe itself was conceived in terms of de- 
velopment, and Herbert Spencer went so far as to 
venture a formula of cosmic evolution. 

Closely connected with these broader implica- 
tions of the theory of evolution was a new interest 
in man himself—his origin, his distribution over the 
earth’s surface, his ideas, his institutions, his cul- 
ture, his achievements. This interest gave rise to 
the science of anthropology, with its various special- 
ized branches. His historic career fell into rough 
categories of savagery, barbarism, civilization, and 
culture. Man’s interest and achievements were 
studied on these various culture levels. Moreover, 
his pattern ideas, his customs, and his social organ- 
ization assumed fairly characteristic forms on these 
levels. 

At the opposite extreme from cosmic evolution 
arose an interest in the development of the individual 
organism, particularly in its earlier stages of growth. 
This gave rise to the science of embryology. Thus 
the individual organism, as well as the cosmos and 
the race, was found to pass through a process of 
development whose stages could be accurately 
traced. 

It is not to be wondered at that three of these 
lines of thought—the development of the race, the 
development of its culture, and the development of 
the individual organism—should meet and fuse in 
the educational theory of the period. The resem- 
blance between the prehuman development of the 
race and the development of the human embryo 
was striking and suggestive. The resemblance be- 


26 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


tween the developing interests of the race and the 
developing interests of the individual person were 
no less suggestive. An easy solution seemed to be 
at hand for a difficult educational problem—the 
discovery of a key to the order of human growth 
and to the materials appropriate for use in those 
stages that human growth passed through. The re- 
sult of the fusion of these dominant trends of cur- 
rent thought in education was the recapitulation 
theory. 

According to the recapitulation theory, “‘ontogeny 
repeats phylogeny.” That is to say, the individual 
person in the course of his own life-history passes 
through the successive stages, in abbreviated form, 
through which the race has passed before him dur- 
ing a long period of time. This rehearsal of racial ex- 
perience passes through two distinct stages. It was 
assumed that during his prenatal development the 
person passes through all the stages of organic evo- 
lution through which life had passed on its way from 
the lowest forms of living organisms to the human 
level. Similarly, it was assumed that subsequent to 
birth the person passes through, one after the other 
in ordered sequence, the stages of social evolution 
through which the human race had passed. These 
stages of human social development were designated 
“culture epochs.” 

From the recapitulary point of view, the child is 
born with an equipment of inner native tendencies. 
These are the result of the operation of the factor of 
heredity. Moreover, these characteristics are deter- 
mined at birth, so that human nature consists of 
given qualities. It follows that they are unchange- 
able. In this assumption, the will neither of the in- 
dividual nor of society has any appreciable modifying 


THE CURRICULUM AS RECAPITULATION 27 


effect upon human nature. Its characteristics and 
its future are predetermined. 

As the inner tendencies of human nature are de- 
termined by heredity, so also is the order of the ap- 
pearance, the functioning, and the waning of these 
tendencies. At all stages of growth these qualities 
are either active or potential. Not all of them func- 
tion at any given stage of development. Now some 
lie slumbering within the depths of the potential 
self. Now some are in the full action of their ma- 
turity. Now some are waning or have completely 
atrophied. Their proper functioning depends not 
only upon their being stimulated but upon their 
being stimulated at the proper time; therefore, the 
utmost importance of discovering the time of the 
normal appearance of each of these tendencies and 
of applying the proper stimuli at precisely the 
proper time. 

On the negative side the repression of these natu- 
ral tendencies that have been implanted within hu- 
man nature by age-old tendencies of the race must 
result in the formation of complexes and _ perver- 
sions that will disarrange the mind, interfere with 
the natural order of development, and erupt in later 
years in undesirable, sometimes even criminal, forms 
of behavior. In this respect the theory of recapitula- 
tion, though on entirely different grounds, had some- 
thing in common with the Freudian psychology. 
According to this view, therefore, it was of the great- 
est importance, in order to avoid complications, that 
these impulses, welling up out of profound racial 
depths, should not be obstructed in their free flow 
but that at their predetermined time they should 
find their normal expression. 

The recapitulation theory offered a fertile soil for 


28 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


the recrudescence of the ancient Greek theory of 
catharsis. Not all the tendencies that the racial 
urge has crowded into human nature are desirable 
in modern life. Some of them are selfish, deceitful, 
cruel, beastly. The doctrine of the negative result 
of the curbing of these tendencies would prevent 
their being safely repressed. The only method of 
elimination of undesirable tendencies that remained 
was through catharsis. Since the emergence of the 
more elemental tendencies is likely to be transitory, 
it was assumed that the best method of dealing with 
them was not through inhibition, but by allowing 
them to find expression in the earlier years, so that 
they would have run their course and become atro- 
phied by the time maturity was reached. It was 
assumed that their more unsocial and repulsive ex- 
pression might be effectively modified by redirec- 
tion. It was also assumed that the same desirable 
result might be obtained by having them indulged 
only in the imagination. In this way it was pro- 
posed that human nature should be purged of its 
grosser elements that were left-overs from its animal 
ancestry, through controlled expression. 

Thus human nature and human character were 
matters of development through the emergence and 
receding of natural, hereditary tendencies. Of this 
fact of growth education must take full account 
and shape its procedure accordingly. In this proce- 
dure the right development depends not only upon 
stimulation and expression but equally upon the 
use of the right stimuli. Tendency and stimulus 
must exactly correspond to each other. It was, in 
consequence, of the utmost importance that the 
educator know of a certainty the predetermined 
order in which that development takes place and 


THE CURRICULUM AS RECAPITULATION 29 


also that he know the right sort of materials to use 
for each interest at the time of its proper function- 
ing. 

To the holder of the recapitulation view, recapit- 
ulation seemed to offer the key to the order of 
growth. Would one know when to expect the emer- 
gence of any given capacity or interest? Let him 
search the history of the development of the race. 
At the point where a given interest emerged in 
racial history, that was the point at which it would 
certainly emerge in the history of the developing 
individual. Would he know when an interest would 
cease functioning? Let him search the history of 
the race for the disappearance of that interest. In 
this way the educator would be able to chart the 
development of the individual, to provide for the 
appearance and decline of each tendency, and to 
formulate in advance a policy of procedure. 

So also did it seem to offer a key to the selection 
of the nature of the materials to be used in educa- 
tion and the time of their presentation. Man at the 
various levels of culture has engaged in certain ac- 
tivities and has achieved certain results in the form 
of ideas, customs, and institutions. These activities, 
ideas, and customs are the storehouse to which the 
educator must go for the materials suitable for the 
education of youth. When a child is passing through 
the savage stage, the proper materials to present to 
him are the activities and ideas of savages. When 
he reaches the barbaric stage, let him be occupied 
with the pursuits and ideas of the race at its level 
of barbaric culture. When he reaches the time of 
civilization and becomes interested in laws and the 
reflective problems of life, let him be occupied with 
the codes, the philosophies, and the institutions of 


30 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


civilized man. In the final stage of culture, let 
him be introduced to the deeper insights and appreci- 
ations of life, the good and the beautiful, the reality 
of things, the meaning and worth of life, its higher 
expression in literature and art, its ethics, and its 
religion. | 

For a considerable period the conception of the 
curriculum as recapitulation had a great vogue, es- 
pecially in Germany and America. Aside from a 
few lonely voices, there no longer remain many ad- 
vocates of the view. But while the vogue lasted, it 
had a decided effect upon the curriculum as far as 
its influence extended. Its appeal to those who en- 
thusiastically adhered to this view is easily. accounted 
for by the fascinating parallelism between cosmic, 
racial, cultural, and personal development. The 
points of resemblance appeared to be so clear that 
they carried conviction. It must also be remem- 
bered that modern experimental psychology was 
only in its beginnings. History is not wanting in 
plentiful instances where the mind in other fields of 
thought has leaped from striking analogies to con- 
clusions—sometimes to dogmas, in science as well 
as in religion. 

An evaluation of the conception of the curriculum 
as recapitulation must list a number of gains to its 
credit. 

Among them must be listed a partial shifting of 
the focus of attention from materials to the child. 
It is true that this shift was far from being complete. 
The attention was primarily upon the life-history 
of the race, but always as it related itself to the 
child. At any rate, education was emancipating it- 
self from the age-old and persistent conception that 
education must be thought of in terms of a body of 


THE CURRICULUM AS RECAPITULATION 31 


knowledge with its deadening traditionalism, to be 
passed on from one generation to another. 

Perhaps its greatest constructive contribution con- 
sisted in the fact that it placed its primary emphasis 
upon growth in the individual. It even arrived at a 
charting of the stages of growth. It is true that 
these stages were extremely faulty and that they 
can no longer be defended. But it was something 
that the idea of growth should have been established 
and that any sort of charting should have been at- 
tempted. The conception of growth has become 
central in the modern conception of education, and 
the charting of growth by means of objective record 
and experimentation is one of the major tasks with 
which educational psychology is confronted at the 
present time. 

Among the constructive contributions of this con- 
ception must be listed the fact that it placed great 
emphasis upon the grading of the materials of edu- 
cation. The Herbartians had moved to the position 
of grading upon the basis of apperception. But here 
the basis is shifted to the fact of a growing person, 
growing from within through the maturing of the 
capacities of original nature. No longer is the mind 
thought of as being “formed” from without; it 
carries its patterns within its own native equipment. 
Such growth as there is is growth from within. 

The decay of the conception of the curriculum as 
recapitulation in modern educational thinking was 
due to its own inherent defects. The most funda- 
mental of these was the fact that it rested upon a 
faulty psychology. It is true that there is a most 
striking and fascinating parallelism between the bi- 
ological development of the human organism and 
the development of organic life. But that there is 


32 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


any causal relation between the two series of phe- 
nomena modern biologists refuse to affirm. That 
is to say, the fundamental doctrine of the concep- 
tion rests upon a mere assumption which is unsup- 
ported by scientific facts. Once, of course, doubt 
was cast upon this basic assumption, the entire 
framework of the theory crumbled. 

In addition to this insecure assumption, the con- 
ception of the curriculum as recapitulation heavily 
weighted the hereditary factor to the practical ex- 
clusion of all other factors. Modern psychology does 
not minimize the factor of heredity, as is evidenced 
by the great importance that is attached to the 
original nature of man as the basic element in all 
education. But it comes far short of making it the 
exclusive factor. Modern education looks upon 
heredity as affording the raw material of human 
nature upon which education works, but it assumes 
that original nature is only the starting point in 
education, the function of which is to produce de- 
sirable changes through the wise use of the environ- 
mental factor and the factor of inner control. 

A direct outgrowth of this adherence to heredity 
was the binding of the present irrevocably to the 
past. It is always the past of the race that is finding 
expression in the present generation. The practical 
effect of this view was not significantly different 
from the influence of knowledge in this respect. 
Knowledge bound the present to the social inheri- 
tance; recapitulation bound it to the biological in- 
heritance. This was not only true as regards human 
nature itself. It was also true as regards the ma- 
terials that were used in the curriculum. These ma- 
terials were always limited to the past experience 
of the race. The forward look was wholly wanting. 


THE CURRICULUM AS RECAPITULATION = 33 


So also was any creative attitude toward life. A 
human nature hopelessly weighted down by a heredi- 
tary past was also hopelessly weighted down by 
what men in the past felt and did, irrespective of its 
value for the present. Manifestly such a past-laden 
type of curriculum could not advance the interests 
of a race that has begun to think in terms of 
the future and the as-yet-unrealized values toward 
which it is moving. 

Such a view of human nature assumes that it is 
always right and therefore to be followed without 
attempt at change. This view modern education 
cannot approve. It sees in human nature a group of 
unorganized capacities that may be good or bad, 
depending upon whether they are developed in one 
direction or another and whether they are inte- 
grated into a unified body of impulses, attitudes, 
and habits. 

Finally, education, under this conception, was 
shut up to a rigid, given, unchangeable human na- 
ture. There was no room for modification of 1m- 
pulses. Blind tendencies, rather than conscious, or- 
ganized, and changing values, became the centre of 
human endowment. With such an endowment, edu- 
cation had its task set for it as a following rather 
than an anticipating and directing enterprise. The 
future conduct of human beings could be predicted 
from the beginning. All that was left for education 
to do was to submit to the inevitable. 

It is evident from the foregoing survey of the his- 
toric conceptions of the curriculum that there is a 
definite movement away from the external and the 
traditional and the formal in the direction of the 
experience of the learner. The centre of the process 
has shifted from process to materials, from materials 


34 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


to human nature. History has prepared the way for 
modern education to think of the curriculum in 
terms of the human person who, together with his 
social group, is seeking for a fuller, more meaningful, 
and more satisfying life. 


IV 


THE CURRICULUM AS ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED 
EXPERIENCE 


Tue view of the curriculum that is taking form in 
the current theory and practice of education is that 
of the curriculum as enriched and controlled experi- 
ence. 

In this view, the centre of education has shifted 
completely from the learning process and subject- 
matter to persons. Moreover, attention seizes upon 
a particular aspect of personal life—upon that of 
personality in the process of realizing itself. Modern 
education sees personality, not as a given or com- 
pleted thing, but at all times as a potential self—a 
process, a growth, a becoming. It sees personality as 
the dynamic and organizing centre of a continuum 
of experience that is constantly undergoing recon- 
struction as it moves forward with increasing clear- 
ness and richness of meaning and certainty of con- 
trol toward the progressive realization of a set of 
organized values. For this reason it sees self-realiza- 
tion taking place in and through a meaningful, in- 
tegrated, and controlled experience. Furthermore, 
it sees these self-realizing persons, not in isolation, 
but in association with other selves in a society that 
is also moving forward with increasing self-conscious- 
ness toward the progressive realization of socially 
determined values. 

It follows that, since persons realize themselves in 
and through meaningful, integrated, and controlled 

35 


86 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


experience, the approach to the assistance of per- 
sons in the attainment of an effective and satisfying 
individual life must be through the continuous re- 
construction of individual and social experience. 
Such redirection of experience will assume, on the 
whole, two aspects: enrichment, on the one hand, 
and self-conscious and self-directive control, on the 
other. Enrichment will be accomplished by assist- 
ing the growing person to give meaning to his ex- 
perience and range and depth to its content, and 
by causing it to contribute to the realization of his 
chosen ends. Control will be accomplished by as- 
sisting the growing person clearly to define his ob- 
jectives, to organize his values, and to bring his 
experience under the influence of an organized and 
dominant purpose. The concepts of persons, ex- 
perience, enrichment, adjustment, and control are 
of such fundamental importance to the present dis- 
cussion that they must be considered later in greater 
detail. It will suffice in this connection to state the 
general point of view in each instance. 

From this point of view, the curriculum has its 
beginning, its continuance, and its end in a forward- 
moving and worthful experience. Its content is 
determined by the content of experience. Its or- 
ganization is determined by the way in which expe- 
rience moves forward toward the objectives of self- 
realizing persons. That is to say, the curriculum 7s 
expervence under intelligent and purposive control. 

As in the case of each of the historic theories of 
the curriculum, the concept of the curriculum as 
enriched and controlled experience has its own in- 
tellectual and social backgrounds. Out of that back- 
ground emerge two fundamental ideas. On the in- 
tellectual side, the dominating philosophical concept 


THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 37 


is that of self-realization. On the social side, the 
dominating concept is that of democracy, the only 
form of social organization thus far developed within 
which a self-realizing life is possible for the many. 
These two concepts appear to be interdependent 
and inseparable and, together, constitute the signa- 
ture of the modern world. They are the central 
concepts around which our intellectual life and our 
social programmes are being organized. 

The movement of modern social thinking toward 
democracy is the result, in part, of profound changes 
in economic function and structure. The most thor- 
oughgoing of these was the industrialization of so- 
ciety through the introduction of the machine into 
the productive process in the eighteenth century. 
Though for a time the machinizing of industry has 
resulted in the domination of the machine over the 
human factor in production, it is having the effect 
of bringing the masses from whose ranks labor has 
been recruited into self-consciousness and into a 
position of fundamental importance in the social 
economy. Gradually, rights and privileges have been 
wrested from a powerful aristocracy on the ground 
of the indispensable place which labor has come to 
occupy in modern social life. Gradually, these rights 
and opportunities have been extended from the 
privilege of franchise to more human conditions 
under which labor does its work, such as shorter 
hours, living wages, sanitary working conditions, the 
protection of the worker against dangerous machin- 
ery, and, increasingly, the participation of the worker 
in the management of the business. Increasingly, 
leisure and the opportunities for culture are being 
universalized. The right of the common man to have 
desires and to realize them is gradually becoming 


88 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


more and more recognized. The conviction that his 
destiny and the destiny of society itself are inter- 
dependent, if not one, is gaining ground in social 
theory and is making itself felt in practical political 
and industrial programmes. In this way it would 
seem that industry carries within its own bosom 
factors that in time will humanize both its ends and 
its processes and ultimately subordinate machines 
and products and processes to persons. 

It is not yet by any means wholly clear what is 
involved in the concept of democracy. As a form 
of social organization it is still in the experimental 
stage. Certain details of the idea, however, are be- 
coming quite well defined. It has already become 
clear that, essentially, democracy is not so much a 
form of the political state or even of industrial or- 
ganization as it is a mode of social living. As such 
it involves not only such ideas as equality of rights 
and opportunity for each member of society to 
make the most of his life within the limits of his 
capacities, but a sharing of the relations, functions, 
responsibilities, and destiny of a common human 
life. 

It is clear, then, that democracy has to do with 
self-realizing persons as they live out their lives in a 
shared social situation. Whatever the details that 
ultimately may be involved in a philosophy of de- 
mocracy, the placement of fundamental emphasis 
must rest upon persons as such—upon human values 
as over against all other values whatsoever. And 
that aspect of persons upon which it must focus its 
attention in the criticism of existing processes and 
in the creation of new processes is precisely that 
upon which education focuses its attention—upon 
the ends and means by which persons realize them- 


THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 39 


selves. The ultimate criterion by which every in- 
stitution and process, be it industrial, political, so- 
cial, or religious, must be judged is its effect upon 
the self-realization of persons. Consequently, the 
philosophy that will furnish the intellectual support 
of democracy as a form of associated living will be a 
philosophy that will start from a centre of persons 
and purposes rather than mechanisms and will think 
its way through all peripheral problems in the light 
of these values. 

And since democracy is a shared experience, it is 
not enough that individual persons achieve the en- 
richment and control of their experiences in isola- 
tion from their fellows. They must acquire the 
ability to give meaning and depth to common social 
experience and to bring it under the direction of a 
shared purpose. Only so can there be social self- 
consciousness and self-direction. Only so can an 
adequate secial medium be achieved within which, 
and within which alone, individual personality can 
be achieved. For even the individual self does not 
appear from the beginning as a set up and self- 
sufficient entity adjusting itself to other equally 
completed selves. The self is quite as much a social 
as an individual product. The I-thou consciousness 
arises out of the process of adjustment of selves 
that are in process of becoming to other selves that 
are also in the process of becoming, just as the I-it 
consciousness arises out of the adjustment of the 
growing person to things. 

Moreover, these social backgrounds have their 
intellectual accompaniments. As has already been 
pointed out, simultaneously with the emergence of 
the social concept of democracy and inseparable 
from it there appeared in philosophy the idea of 


40 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


free self-realization as the highest goal of individual 
and social living. In addition to this fundamental 
philosophical concept there are several aspects of 
this intellectual background. 

Undoubtedly foremost among these is modern 
science. Science has not only taken an objective 
attitude toward the facts of experience but has 
sought by its technic of investigation to establish 
correlations between one fact in experience and an- 
other or between one group of facts and another. 
When it appears that one fact follows another with 
some degree of regularity, science formulates a hy- 
pothesis, which is only a guess that some correlation 
exists between them. When, through repeated anal- 
ysis and experiment, science succeeds in removing all 
irrelevant factors and finds that one fact or group 
of facts is followed invariably by another fact or 
group of facts, it formulates a generalization, or 
“law,” by which it becomes possible to control the 
second fact by modifying the first. The methods of 
science are observation, analysis, and experimenta- 
tion. In its crowning method, experimentation, re- 
sults are first evaluated. The attention is then fo- 
cused upon the process by which the results have 
been obtained. The process is then reconstructed 
in order to secure the desired results. In this way 
attention shunts from end to process and from proc- 
ess to end until, through the supplying and with- 
drawing of factors, the desired ends are secured. By 
the use of the methods of observation, analysis, and 
experimentation, with faithful records of findings, 
all the great sciences of the modern world have been 
built up. At the beginning science limited its re- 
search to discovering the “‘laws”’ that govern man’s 
physical environment. More recently it has ven- 


THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 41 


tured into the realms of man’s mental life and his 
social relations only to discover that the same uni- 
formity that obtains in the relation of physical 
phenomena also obtains in psychical and _ social 
phenomena, except that the factors in the latter 
cases are so complex and variable that their relation 
is much more difficult to discover and control. The 
spirit and the method of science chiefly determine 
the major patterns of the modern intellectual world. 

A second intellectual accompaniment of democ- 
racy has been the introduction of knowledge and 
intelligent control into the commonplace activities 
of human life. Under the aristocratic forms of social 
organization, thinking and activity were dissociated. 
Thought was elaborated in an isolated realm of ab- 
stract ideas, while the practical activities of life 
went on blindly as menial necessities. Thought be- 
came identified with leisure, while the practical 
processes called forth only unintelligent physical 
activity. Among no people was this tendency more 
pronounced than among the ancient Greeks. With 
them thinking was confined not only to the free 
one-tenth of the total population but to those only 
who engaged in no occupation which involved “prac- 
tical’’ activities. From the élite class even the artists 
were excluded because they handled the materials 
of their art with their hands. Intellectual activity 
found its expression in a philosophy which moved 
in a realm of abstract ideas. In pre-revolutionary 
China one of the badges of the scholar was the long 
finger-nails, a token of physical inactivity and of 
devotion to intellectual pursuits. A striking instance 
of this tendency in modern times was to be found in 
imperialistic Germany, where there not only existed 
a wide gulf between the élite and the masses, but 


42 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


where a characteristic idealistic philosophy was 
elaborated apart from the concrete problems and 
situations of practical social and political life. It is 
not so in democracy. The needs and satisfactions 
of the common man have lifted physical activity 
from the level of menial service to be rendered to 
social superiors to the level of mutual service in the 
interest of a more effective and satisfying life for 
the many. The first outstanding service of science 
to humanity was the introduction of intelligence 
into the processes that support life. Increasingly 
has the movement of scientific thought been from 
the technical laboratory out into the practical activi- 
ties that minister to the well-bemg of human social 
life. In this way the food supply of the race has 
been increased through the introduction of intelli- 
gence into agriculture, the death-rate has been con- 
tinuously reduced through the introduction of in- 
telligence into the understanding of the causes of 
disease and the conditions that make for health, 
and the burdens of life that before were borne upon 
the bent bodies of human slaves have been shifted 
to tireless machines through the practical appliances 
of modern life. So absolutely transforming have been 
these ideals that one who now fails to contribute his 
share to the comfort and well-being of his fellows is 
looked upon as a social parasite. In this way the 
experience of the common man has come to have 
significance, both because it has been immersed in 
intelligence and because through it indispensable 
service is rendered to society in a shared life. 
Meantime there has emerged a new approach to 
the discovery and the validation of truth. Pragma- 
tism may be popularly defined as a practical way of 
looking at truth. It sees truth emerging from the 


THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 48 


warm and moving current of experience. It judges 
the truthfulness of ideas and convictions by the 
manner in which they fit into experience and, in 
particular, by the effect they have upon experience. 
If ideas do not square with experience, and especially 
if they do not effect any changes in experience, grave 
doubts attach to their validity. It is characteristic 
of the pragmatic attitude toward truth that it sees 
in truth a vital, growing, changing thing that changes 
as experience changes, so that even truth, waiting 
as it does upon an expanding and deepening experi- 
ence, is a becoming. Similarly, truth that no longer 
corresponds to reality as reality manifests itself in 
the living tissues of experience, ceases to be truth. 
From this point of view truth is a discovery. As 
such, all truth is essentially experimental. In its 
highest form it is an instrument for the control of 
experience. When, therefore, ideas and convictions 
cease to function in the furthering of experience, 
they fall into desuetude and decay. In this way 
the belief that the world is flat no longer fits 
into the facts of experience. Least of all does it 
further and sustain the changing needs of mankind 
in the enlarged and complex conditions of modern 
living. One is not surprised, therefore, that this 
conception of the earth has lost its grip upon the 
modern mind. In addition to clashing violently with 
other known facts of science, it is an utterly un- 
workable assumption in the conduct of such prac- 
tical activities as navigation, commerce, and com- 
munication. In a similar way ideas of God that 
emerged from the social and intellectual milieu of 
other and past situations, and that functioned ser- 
viceably in those situations, have had to be aban- 
doned because the rich and expanding experience of 


44 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


the race has moved beyond them, and they have 
become desiccated, formal, and meaningless. Thus 
the limited conception of God as a tribal deity seems 
to have filled to its capacity the religious thinking 
of primitive peoples passing through the tribal stage 
of social organization. But when life moved to the 
higher levels of intergroup, interracial, and inter- 
national outlook and relations, the tribal con- 
ception of God appeared to be too small and 
inadequate, and was replaced by a more adequate 
disclosure of God as the only true and living God— 
the God not only of the whole world and of all men 
everywhere but of an outreaching universe whose 
limits modern science has not yet been able to dis- 
cover. It is not without its significance that prag- 
matism has had its rise and development thus far 
in those countries in which the experiment in de- 
mocracy has been going forward. Pragmatism takes 
account not only of experience but of the experi- 
ence of the common man. It sees truth working in 
and through human life as a whole. It is essen- 
tially a democratic philosophy and seems to require 
democratic conditions within which to make head- 
way. 

Simultaneously with the emergence of pragmatism 
in philosophy there has emerged a fresh point of 
view from which to approach the study of mental 
life. The most significant development in current 
psychology has been its tendency in the direction 
of an objective study of behavior and in the direc- 
tion of a functional view of the mind in its relation 
to behavior. The modern psychologist sees in the 
behavior of the organism an adjustment process by 
which the organism is either adapting the environ- 
ment to itself or adapting itself to the environment. 


THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 45 


From the functional point of view, the mind is the 
instrument through which that adjustment is in- 
telligently effected. Im this respect the mind is re- 
lated to the organism as are the other organs. Thus 
the hand has been developed as a prehensile organ 
by means of which it is possible for man to seize 
upon and manipulate objects in his environment. 
Similarly, the foot has been developed as an organ 
of locomotion, the eye of vision, and the ear of 
hearing. In the same way the mind has been devel- 
oped as a central directive instrument whereby the 
adaptive function of all the other organs is made 
more effective, because more intelligent, in the in- 
terest of the survival, the well-being, and the effec- 
tiveness of the organism. 

The earliest development of the behavioristic 
movement in psychology has been in the direction 
of a mechanistic view of the mind, which view has 
generally been assimilated to the term ‘“‘behavior- 
ist.”” According to this view, behavior is the result 
of a psychological mechanism whereby a stimulus 
sets off a response that runs through to a completed 
unit of behavior, somewhat after the fashion of a 
nickel-in-the-slot machine. Because behavior is 
secured by and through a mechanism, it is always 
possible, given a complete knowledge of the situa- 
tion, accurately to predict the response. From this 
viewpoint, consciousness may virtually be ignored 
as a determining factor in behavior and regarded 
at most as nothing more than an accompaniment 
of the response. From the same general point of 
view, the drive of behavior is to be found in the 
tendency of the response mechanism, once it is set 
off, to run through to the completion of the re- 
sponse. In complex and sustained behavior one 


46 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


response sets off another, and so on until an in- 
tegrated response is completed. 

A more recent tendency, however, has been a 
movement in the direction of interpreting behavior 
in terms of purpose, consciousness, reflective thought, 
and deliberate choice. From this viewpoint, all be- 
havior is seen as fundamentally conative; that is, as 
moving toward ends through an act of impulse or 
will. On the lower levels of behavior, this outreach- 
ing toward ends is unconscious and blind, and there 
is little or no delay between the situation and the 
response. This type of response is characteristic of 
most animal behavior and of some of the lower 
forms of human behavior, as in the case of food and 
sex behavior or such complex processes as the mak- 
ing of combs for the storing of honey or the build- 
ing of specific types of nests by different species of 
wasps. On the higher levels of behavior there occurs 
a delay between the situation and the response 
which is filled with consciousness, reflective thought, 
the criticism of ends and means, evaluation, delib- 
erate choice, and the exercise of a determining will. 
As contrasted with mechanistic behaviorism, this 
view is decidedly a purposive behaviorism. 

But when psychology deals with ends that are 
consciously conceived, desired, criticised, organized, 
and striven for, it has invaded the realm of persons 
who are engaged in the process of realizing them- 
selves. Though personality appears as a continuum 
of experience that is moving toward the realization 
of values, the psychology of persons sees at the 
centre of experience an active, outreaching, growing 
self that is in the process of becoming. 

There is still another element of the greatest im- 
portance in the background of the conception of the 


THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 47 


curriculum as experience. It is the significant fact 
that, through deepening insights into the nature of 
experience and some ventures in managing it, man 
has come to assume a forward-looking attitude 
toward experience and a growing confidence in his 
ability to control it. Area after area of his material 
and social world he has brought in some measure 
under his purposive control. He has come to believe 
that his control can be greatly extended and that 
he can anticipate experience and, in a large measure, 
determine what it shall be. Man is coming to be- 
lieve that, in time, with a more adequate knowledge 
of himself he will be able to accomplish as much 
in the control of his own personal and social expe- 
rience as he has in the realm of the applied physical 
sciences, such as chemistry or physics, or in the 
realm of the applied biological sciences, such as agri- 
culture, animal husbandry, or horticulture. When 
he has mastered this technic, personality will be far 
more an achievement than it is now, when, with his 
lack of knowledge, it is largely the result of the 
fortuitous operation of factors largely external to 
himself. He begins to hope that when he shall have 
acquired something like an adequate understanding 
of the functions and processes of social living he 
will be able to effect as great results in the building 
of society as he has accomplished in the applied 
physical sciences. Then he may be able to erect a 
social order whose institutions and structures will 
furnish a medium wherein human life may go for- 
ward toward self-realization under conditions that 
will stimulate and free the best of man’s capacities. 
This amounts to a creative attitude on his part 
toward his world and toward himself. It is becom- 
ing increasingly clear, as we shall later see, that, 


48 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


within the limits of his knowledge and capacity, the 
adaptive process is not primarily that of persons to 
environment, but of environment to persons in 
order to realize their desires. Only beyond the lim- 
its of his ability to control his world does man adapt 
himself to it. Under the impulse of these ideas man 
is no longer a merely passive observer of what is 
going on around and within him. In these processes 
he is coming to have a creative part. 

In one form or another the antecedents of the 
conception of the curriculum as experience are very 
old. In its oldest and simplest form it derives from 
primitive education. The education of primitive 
man consisted of two sets of activity. One was occu- 
pied with a few practical processes such as hut- 
building, food-getting, and the occupations of war- 
fare. The other consisted of the performance of 
certain activities of a religious nature that were de- 
signed to control the spirits that were believed to 
possess the objects of nature. There was no formal 
process of education, with schools, teachers, technic, 
or course of study. The control of these activities 
constituted the curriculum. The method consisted, 
for the most part, of an unconscious participation 
of the immature in the activities, functions, and re- 
lations of the group. Learning was reduced to the 
simplest forms of actual living under guidance. So 
completely was education merged with living that 
it was not thought of as a process at all. 

The conception of the curriculum in terms of ex- 
perience found conscious and rational expression 
among the Athenian Greeks of the earlier period. 
The objective of Greek education at its best was to 
create a many-sided person—physically, intellec- 
tually, essthetically, morally, and socially. Up to 
the seventh year the Greek boy received an in- 


THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 49 


formal education through participation in the ac- 
tivities and relations of the family. In the palestra, 
which he entered at seven, he acquired physical 
health, grace, and strength through participation 
with his fellows in the games. In the music school, 
so called because it introduced him to those activi- 
ties over which the muses presided—literature, his- 
tory, and the fine arts—he was thrown back upon his 
own self-activity and creativeness. Instead of re- 
quiring the learner to commit an ode to memory, 
the Greek teacher chanted an ode while he required 
the boy to improvise an accompaniment on the 
lyre. The greater part of his knowledge he acquired 
through listening to and participating in the con- 
versation of his elders in the agora. The primary 
educational institution among the Greeks was the 
small city state, in the determination of which every 
citizen took a creative and responsible part. The 
Greek’s most closely regulated military training was 
completed in the gymnasium and in camp and on 
campaigns. This will explain how, with the Greek, 
education was a continuous process that lasted 
through his entire life. The results of this type of 
education furnish one of the luminous plateaus in 
the history of man’s career. The Greeks developed 
a type of mind that was active, versatile, forward- 
looking, dynamic, creative. At no period in history 
has the human spirit flowered into more beautiful 
and significant forms of intellectual insight, esthetic 
attainment or civic creativeness. It was when the 
later Greek period destroyed the city state, through 
which this rich creative experience found expression, 
and acquired a course of formal study and a formal 
method that Greek education lost its creativeness 
and became a process. 

The realists of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 


50 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


turies contributed much to the conception of the 
curriculum as experience. In their reaction against 
the rigid and narrow formalism of later humanism. 
they insisted upon the value of the content of edu- 
cation. With Montaigne, however, there was a com- 
plete break with all literary forms of education. 
The social realists sought for the instrument of edu- 
cation in social experience. Social contacts, especially 
through travel under the direction of a tutor, were 
substituted for books. The sense realists as rep- 
resented by Francis Bacon and Comenius placed 
their emphasis upon experience, but upon experience 
in direct contact with nature, its objects and proc- 
esses. ‘There was always in the forefront of the 
thinking of these realists the idea of control, as is 
evidenced by Bacon’s Utopia of scientific achieve- 
ment as set forth in his New Atlantis. They, too, 
put aside literature as such as the substance of the 
curriculum. The books that they devised, such as 
the Orbis Pictus, were intended to introduce the 
learner to direct contacts with the world of nature. 

As the modern period is approached Rousseau, as 
the leading exponent of naturalism in the eighteenth 
century, gave the concept of the curriculum as ex- 
perience a powerful and lasting impetus. The natu- 
ralism expounded by Rousseau was a powerful reac- 
tion against the authoritative and repressive spirit 
of the eighteenth century, not only in the state and 
church and in society in general but also in educa- 
tion. In the state the few ruled and the many 
obeyed. In the church theological dogma and the 
ecclesiastical institution were imposed from above 
upon the submissive masses. In education the adult 
point of view and the information that adults 
considered important were imposed upon passive 


THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 51 


and receptive learners in a thoroughly disciplinary 
scheme of instruction. Against all this Rousseau 
revolted with all the energy of his passionate nature. 
His plea for a return to a natural state in politics 
was largely responsible for the French Revolution. 
His plea for a return to a natural education based 
upon the experience of the child was, in a large 
measure, the beginning of the modern reconstruc- 
tion of education. Rousseau insisted on the innate 
goodness of human nature unmodified by culture. 
With Rousseau whatever was natural was right. 
Formal education was a positive interference with 
nature. Consequently, the less formal education 
there was, the better. Before the age of twelve he 
would have the child know nothing of books and 
teachers. These early years were the time for the 
child to build a strong and healthy body through 
intimate and unafraid contact with nature and 
through play. To his mind two years were sufficient 
for the child to master all the imtellectual knowl- 
edge that the child would need. As was consistent 
with this view, Rousseau made much of the emo- 
tions, an element in traditional education that had 
been almost entirely omitted. With him, the best 
teacher in all fields, but especially in morals, was 
experience, working through natural consequences. 
In these ways Rousseau gave to education a new 
point of view and a new outlook. He not only 
placed the child at the centre of the educative proc- 
ess; he restated education in terms of experience. 
He may stand as the representative of that line of 
educational reformers from Pestalozzi down through 
Froebel and Montessori to Dewey, who would state 
education in terms of the activity of the child. 
Undoubtedly the outstanding exponent of the 


52 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


theory of education in terms of the experience of 
the child in modern times is John Dewey. He has 
carried the implications of pragmatic philosophy 
and functional psychology over into the field of edu- 
cation. With him education is the conscious, pur- 
posive, and continuous reconstruction of experience. 
The function of intelligence through the use of the 
accumulated experience of the race 1s to put un- 
derstanding into experience and to bring it under 
purposive control. The school is a specialized insti- 
tution within which objectives that are socially as 
well as individually determined, may be set up and 
experiences selected and placed in an order of se- 
quence with reference to those objectives. The 
method of education is to immerse responsible 
thinking in the practical activities by which the 
common, shared life of society is supported. With 
him the school is a society in which children, living 
in conscious and intelligent social relations, carry 
forward enterprises that are typical of the funda- 
mental activities of the larger society of which the 
school is a part. Purposive, constructive experience 
that is full of problematical situations is the basis 
of the learning process. To this ongoing experience 
knowledge is related as source material to which the 
learner goes in order to find the data he needs for 
accurate and creative thinking in connection with 
those crucial points in experience. The new schools 
which he would substitute for old are schools in 
which the learning process is grounded in the actual 
experience of growing persons. 

It is around this conception that modern educa- 
tion is undergoing its present reconstruction. And 
it is in the curriculum that this reconstruction is 
finding its most fundamental expression. From this 


THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 53 


point of view, the curriculum is coming to be thought 
of as an enriched and controlled experience. It be- 
gins and ends in the experience of the learner. 
Knowledge arises out of experience as meaning and 
re-enters experience as an instrument of control. It 
places emphasis upon the worth of present expe- 
rience, though it sees in the significance of present 
experience the antecedent of future experience, as 
the present is the consequent of the past. Education 
is not, therefore, a thing that can be carried on 
apart from life. It is life bemg lived under the 
counsel and guidance of the mature members of 
society who are assisting the immature to make 
their adjustment to the material and social world in 
which they will live and thus to realize themselves. 
It consists in sharing the continuing purpose of the 
race and its experience in the great adventure of 
living with those who are to assume the responsi- 
bility for the further working out of its enterprises. 

While the conception of the curriculum as en- 
riched and controlled experience constitutes a radi- 
cal departure from the traditional views of educa- 
tion, in reality the fact that it is grounded in experi- 
ence makes it possible for it to conserve the valuable 
and permanent elements in the historic conceptions 
of the curriculum. As a matter of fact, the severest 
discipline is that which the purposive and persistent 
carrying forward of experience requires. It has 
been wrongly and hastily assumed by some that the 
subordination of knowledge to experience leads to 
a soft and flabby education. On the contrary, the 
discipline that is required when experience is being 
brought under purposive control is the most rigid 
and exacting discipline known to human nature. 
Moreover, it is vastly more effective in that it is 


$4 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS’ EDUCATION 


not imposed from without but springs up from within 
in the form of self-control in the presence of dis- 
tractions and obstructions. 

Similarly, knowledge acquires a much more pro- 
found importance when it becomes an instrument 
for the understanding and control of experience. It 
then becomes indispensable to the progress of human 
living. It becomes living and dynamic and creative. 
The historic experience of the race springs into liv- 
ing forms when it is perceived that in it the race is 
living through its problems and reaching out after 
satisfactory solutions and vantage points from which 
to face its own future. Knowledge as content is 
dead; knowledge as the record of striving, of think- 
ing, of points of view, of values that have at some 
time been the indispensable supports of persons who, 
like ourselves, have faced for the first time the great 
adventure of living, with all the risk and romance 
that such an adventure holds, is instinct with throb- 
bing life. 

So also as respects the concept of personal growth. 
Growth is the first necessity, of education, as it is 
its chief end. From the viewpoint of experience, 
growth is to be judged, not for what it is not, but 
for what it is becoming. As was pointed out at the 
beginning of the chapter, it is just this quality of 
growth, of becoming, that makes progressive self- 
realization possible. It is growth that makes a 
place for the continuous reconstruction of expe- 
rience. From the standpoint of education as instruc- 
tion, it is difficult for the educator to be patient 
with growth, for the reason that he of necessity 
judges it for what it is not. But from the standpoint 
of education as the reconstruction of experience, the 
educator finds his opportunity in growth, for the 


RRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 55 
reason that he sees it for what it is—a becoming 
which makes possible the continuous redirection of 
experience by the learner himself. The educator 
who sees growth as a process of becoming finds one 
of his chief problems to be to carry growth forward 
into adult life and thus to keep that life responsive 
to fresh situations so that learning may continue 
throughout life. 

Thus it would appear that in the growing expe- 
rience of living persons we have a mediating centre 
that is capable of gathering up into itself those per- 
manent values that education has developed through 
a partial emphasis placed upon less central and 
fundamental factors at the various stages of its 
historic career. 

Significant as these implications are for education 
of any sort whatsoever, they are especially urgent 
in moral and religious education for the reason that 
these have to do directly with conduct. The question 
is sharply raised whether it is possible to teach 
morality and religion apart from the actual situa- 
tions in which one is called upon to live his life 
morally and religiously. From the point of view of 
the present discussion the answer is an emphatic 
negative. If morality and religion are to be taught 
effectively, that is, so that they will function in the 
conscious and purposive direction of experience 
from within, they must be taught as an integral 
part of the responses that are made to day-by-day 
actual, concrete, and typical situations that life 
presents to the learner, with the relations, functions, 
and responsibilities that they involve. At the level 
of controlled experience moral and religious ideas 
and motives can be taught as effectively as any 
other ideas, attitudes, or motives. But the religious 


THE C 





56 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


educator must not deceive himself in thinking that 
he has arrived until he has penetrated through all 
considerations that have to do with materials, meth- 
od, concepts, or organization to experience itself. 


V 
THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE 


Tue conception of the curriculum as enriched and 
controlled experience is based upon the worth of 
present experience for its own sake and not simply 
as a preparation for some future experience. ‘This, 
it must be admitted, is a very modern view of ex- 
perience, and one that has yet for the most part to 
win its way in the modern theory and practice of 
education. 

The point of view that dominated the Middle 
Ages was that the only life that was of real value 
was the life after death. This other-worldly view of 
life was the direct outgrowth of the powerful re- 
action of Christianity against the materialism and 
immorality of the Greco-Roman world of the first 
century. The affirmation of the spiritual values of 
life by Christianity under these historic conditions 
resulted in the practical negation of the present life 
as being a hindrance to the attainment of spiritual 
and ethical character. From this point of view the de- 
sires and satisfactions of normal life were considered 
evil and therefore to be denied. It was against these 
backgrounds of practical negation that the Augus- 
tinian doctrine of the total depravity of human na- 
ture emerged as the rationalization of a practical 
attitude toward life. Such a theology, of course, 
called for the complete reconstruction of man’s na- 
ture through the operation of spiritual forces en- 

57 


58 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


tirely external to him, working in cataclysmic fash- 
ion rather than through the normal processes of 
growth. 

It was out of this negative view of the worth of 
present life that asceticism, which gave its signa- 
ture to the Middle Ages, arose. The ascetic re- 
nounced the world and by self-denial and penance 
set about preparing himself for the only real life— 
the life to come. By the monastic vows of chastity, 
poverty, and obedience he severed, one after an- 
other, the ties that bound him to the social order of 
the present world—to the family, to the economic 
order, and to the political state. In the East the 
ascetic sought renunciation in solitude; in the West 
he sought it in the companionship of his brother 
monks in the monastery. By whichever method he 
— sought it, his exclusive affirmation of the worth of 
the life to come led him to a complete renunciation 
of the life that now is. 

The Renaissance and the Reformation profoundly 
modified this view. The Renaissance in the south 
of Europe was a profound reaction from the author- 
ity, the repression, and the meagre life of the Mid- 
dle Ages. It was, at heart, a rediscovery of the 
meaning and worth of the present world. Out of 
this new attitude there were developed two funda- 
mental interests, as has already been suggested—an 
interest in nature and an interest in human life. 
These are the root ideas of the modern world with 
its increasing sense of the worth of present life. Out 
of the interest in nature emerged in time modern 
science; out of the interest in human life emerged 
literature, the social sciences, and all those activities 
that centre in the life of man. The enthusiasm of 
the men of the Renaissance for the classics is to be 


THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE — 59 


explained, not by their interest in the classics as 
such, but by their interest in the rich and satisfy- 
ing life which they found reflected in the classics 
and in the light which these were capable, on that 
account, of throwing upon the meaning of their own 
new-found life. Never has the joyful appreciation 
of the worth of present life found more abundant 
and varied expression than among the many-sided 
men of the Renaissance in the court life of the Italian 
cities—Florence, Milan, Naples, Venice—of the 
thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. The total effect 
of the Renaissance was to shift attention from the 
life after death to the life that now is with its own 
satisfying experience. This radical shift of focus 
was largely due to the fact that the spirit of the 
Renaissance in the south of Europe was dominantly 
secular. 

While the Reformation in the north of Europe 
exerted its influence in the same general direction, 
being a part of the same movement, its specific re- 
sults were somewhat different. ‘The Reformation 
was strongly religious, social, and reformatory. Its 
strong religious interest focused attention upon sal- 
vation, which then, much more than now, was con- 
ceived in terms of life after death. However, with 
all its emphasis upon the saved life in terms of the 
world to come, the Reformation carried with it a 
profound interest in the present life. It emphasized 
the necessity of universal and free education for the 
masses in order to prepare them for effective living 
in the present world, including a strong emphasis 
upon economic efficiency, as well as in order to 
enable them to read the Scriptures so that they 
might learn the way of salvation. In this way the 
Reformation set the present life in eternity. In this 


60 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


way the Reformation offered a somewhat mediating 
view between the exclusive negation of the present 
life by the Middle Ages and the all but exclusive 
affirmation of it by the Renaissance. 

The total effect of the Renaissance and the Ref- 
ormation was to place a supreme value upon adult 
life. For adult life childhood was a preparation, as 
adult life was, in large measure, a preparation for 
the life after death. It was, consequently, judged 
for what it was not, rather than for what it was be- 
coming. Childhood had no standing in its own right 
as being of significance or worth. This is the view 
that dominated Europe and America for centuries. 
It is the view that still dominates educational prac- 
tice. Before the days of Pestalozzi little children 
were dressed precisely like their elders and were 
supposed to have the same attitudes and experiences, 
the only difference being quantitative. The sole 
significance of growth lay in the fact that it was a 
movement away from an undesirable immaturity in 
the direction of a maturity that was alone worth 
while. Even now we are just beginning to perceive 
that childhood is qualitatively as well as quantita- 
tively different from adulthood and that its char- 
acteristic experiences are of intrinsic worth on their 
own account. 

It was from backgrounds such as these that there 
emerged the conception of education as preparation. 
In keeping with these more fundamental movements 
of thought, the emphasis was placed exclusively upon 
the worth of some future experience. The sense of 
values migrated, under this influence, from con- 
crete, actual present experience and found its lo- 
calization in a vague, elusive, far-off future ex- 
perience. Education was conceived, not in terms of 


THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE 61 


actual living, but in terms of preparation to live in 
some future time. 

The negative results of this view upon education 
were many and grave. ‘The first and most serious re- 
sult was to withdraw education from the warm and 
meaningful current of present life and reduce it to 
an isolated and formal process of instruction. Going 
to school was equivalent to going apart from real 
life for a time in order to prepare really to live at 
some future time. The school became a highly 
specialized institution with its own content, organ- 
ization, teachers, and technic, whose patterns were 
determined by the authoritative interest of adults 
rather than by the ongoing and worthful experience 
of the child. In this way the bond of interrelation 
between education and the rest of life was dis- 
solved. 

No sooner had education become separated from 
actual, present, ongoing experience than it lost its 
intrinsic motivation. Experience, for the most part, 
is dynamic and active—an outreaching after the at- 
tainment of ends that are felt to be of worth to the 
person having the experience. The sense of worth 
in objects arises out of the ability of those objects 
to bring satisfaction to persons. It is this sense of 
worth that gives rise to desire in persons. Rather, 
worth and desire are only different aspects of the 
. same process of outreaching that unites persons and 
the ends that they seek. It is this fusion of worth 
in ends, on the one hand, and desires in persons, on 
the other hand, that furnishes the basis of interest. 
Active experience is, in consequence, motivated by 
interest that binds persons to objects. A child at 
play, let us say at building bridges or digging tun- 
nels in a sand pile, offers a complete exhibition of 


62 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


the identification of the person with the end in 
view. The child at interested play becomes so com- 
pletely absorbed in the attainment of ends that are 
immediately before him, namely, completing the 
tunnel or the bridge, that persons or objects about 
him fail to attract his attention. He even loses his 
sense of the passing of time and is only with the 
most insistent persuasion induced to leave his un- 
finished task at mealtime or bedtime. The enthu- 
siast in any field of professional activity, let us say 
the artist who is painting or composing or the re- 
search expert who thinks that he has found a clue 
to the solution of his problem, may become so com- 
pletely absorbed in his work as to become oblivious 
to what else is going on about him—to time or even 
to important personal engagements that for the time 
have been entirely shunted from the field of con- 
sciousness by the dominating interest. 

It follows, of course, that in order to grip the per- 
son and release energy for its attainment, an end 
must be sufficiently near and of a sufficiently prac- 
tical character to bridge the gap of time and effort 
necessary to its attainment. When ends are too re- 
mote or become too generalized or indefinite they 
lose their grip upon the person, and his attitude 
lapses from one of keenness and suspense to one of 
apathy. The invitation of a friend to visit him 
““sometime”’ is too general and indefinite to evoke 
a clear purpose that is likely to make any material 
change in one’s plans. But if the invitation is to 
dine at a certain hour and place, or to spend an 
evening of a certain day or a week-end, the proposal 
receives immediate and definite attention. The pro- 
posal of a trip to Europe or the Orient that is pos- 
sible only in an indefinite future, or that is, for 


THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE _ 63 


financial reasons, entirely out of the question, re- 
ceives only passive attention and is quickly and 
easily dismissed from the mind. But if the proposed 
journey abroad is entirely possible and is practicable 
within a relatively near future, it becomes a matter 
of deep concern, and activities are likely to be re- 
leased that will consummate the arrangements and 
arrange the details of itinerary, equipment, letters 
of credit, passports, and all other necessary pre- 
requisites. Any practical activity that helps to fill 
the round of the day exhibits this quality, according 
to which ends that are attainable within reasonable 
limits of time and energy lay hold upon one, and 
those that are so far removed as to appear extremely 
doubtful or hopeless, or that involve too great effort, 
are abandoned or pursued by a definite putting 
forth of wearying and unwilling effort. The span 
between persons and ends differs greatly with the 
degree of maturity. Children are unable to bridge 
any considerable gap of delay; adults by prevision 
can greatly lengthen the span. This is true of all 
our practical, every-day activities. In the same 
way that happens which is psychologically inevi- 
table when learning is lifted out of its natural setting 
in experience—the disappearance of a warm, moti- 
vating interest. As a result, motivation for the un- 
welcome and boresome task has to be sought in 
external incentives. In this situation resort has 
always been had to reward, punishment, or rivalry. 
As in all such situations, the practice has been ra- 
tionalized by resort to a doctrine of “effort,” accord- 
ing to which it has been made to appear that a 
large part of the virtue of education consists in 
forcing one’s self to persist in the doing of distaste- 
ful tasks in spite of all ennuz. Learning that was 


64 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


attended with interest has been frowned upon as 
“soft”? and unworthy of serious education. 

Closely related to the loss of vital interest was the 
loss of effective retention of such knowledge as 
was imparted to passive learners. As soon as knowl- 
edge is dissociated from concrete experience, learn- 
ing becomes a process of imparting fragments of 
knowledge. Instruction takes the form, so familiar 
in traditional education, of formal “assignments,” 
according to which the content of subject-matter is 
parceled out in bits and fitted into a schedule of 
‘recitations,’ weeks, months, terms, and sessions. 
In this view the “‘assignment” takes the form of 
mastering a certain number of pages or paragraphs 
for a given “‘recitation.”’ When experience is made 
the basis of learning, it itself determines the char- 
acter and the amount of knowledge that is required 
to further it, and also the time at which it should be 
available. But when it becomes a matter of impart- 
ing knowledge apart from experience, teaching be- 
comes a process of “‘dosings,”’ the size and frequency 
of the dose being determined by a time schedule— 
so much to be learned in this period of schedule 
time and so much in that. Moreover, between these 
fragments of information there is little or no con- 
necting tissue, and such as there is is more likely to 
be logical than genetic. As a result, the assimilative 
power of the mind is reduced to its lowest capacity. 
The retention of knowledge becomes a dead load 
upon the memory. It is not to be wondered at, 
therefore, that information acquired apart from the 
living process is most uncertain in its grip upon the 
mind, whereas knowledge that is built into the very 
structure of experience and functions there, like a 
cell in a living organism, is not easily or quickly lost. 


THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE _ 65 


Moreover, experience has a way of being partic- 
ular. When, therefore, education lifts away from 
immediate personal experience it begins at once to 
lose something of that individual quality that be- 
longs to persons. That is to say, there is no expe- 
rience as such, just as there is no honesty as such, 
apart from such particular situations as those in 
which the truth is told or full measure is given. 
Experience is always the experience of persons and, 
even then, of persons in particular situations. When, 
therefore, learning is dissociated from the concrete 
experience of the learner, it at once concerns itself 
with persons in general, which is the equivalent of 
saying with no persons in particular. In this way the 
rich, personal, varied experience of individuals is 
lost sight of and specific ends dissolve into the vaguest 
of generalities, with the inevitable consequence that 
they lose all grip upon the learner, as has just been 
suggested. 

Finally, it may be said that, on the findings of 
modern experimental psychology, the education that 
was supposed to prepare for some future life turned 
out, paradoxically enough, to be questionable prepa- 
ration for real life. That preparation for life is the 
best preparation that prepares the learner directly 
in line with his future activities and through those 
activities themselves; that is to say, through the 
direction and expansion of his present experience in 
continuity with the expected activities of the future. 
It is in recognition of this fact that technical and 
professional education is coming to insist upon ac- 
tual experience in the line of future activity under 
expert supervision. The physician and surgeon must 
have actual hospital experience and demonstrate 
their ability to handle actual typical cases before 


66 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


they are certificated as practitioners. Increasingly, 
the law schools are using the case method with typ- 
ical court-room procedure. Few States will now 
grant certificates to prospective teachers unless they 
have had practice teaching under expert super- 
vision. A considerable part of the training of social 
workers consists of actual field service under super- 
vision. These movements in professional education 
have followed upon the breakdown of the doctrine 
of the transfer of training. And yet, strangely enough, 
moral and religious education have been tardy in 
the recognition of this necessity. Moral and religious 
educators have, on the whole, assumed that a knowl- 
edge of the facts of the Bible, or of ethical principles, 
would carry over into the conduct of life. This un- 
warranted assumption must now be abandoned, and, 
instead, actual experience in living morally and re- 
ligiously must be given under the intelligent super- 
vision of moral and religious persons. 

As against this inherited view of the relative worth 
of present and future experience, the modern edu- 
cator is coming to look upon all of life as a continu- 
ous process. As an integral part of that process each 
and every moment has meaning and worth in and 
of itself. To be sure, each increment of experience 
takes on a depth and range of meaning and worth 
otherwise impossible when it is perceived that it is 
the outgrowth of the past and that the future, in 
turn, will be the outgrowth of the present. The act 
by which a child makes a public and decisive com- 
mitment of his life to the ideals and purposes of 
Christ, and thereby unequivocally identifies himself 
with the movement of the kingdom of God, will be 
found, upon tracing its antecedents, to emerge out 
of a background of growing Christian attitudes and 


THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE 67 


purposes that have been in process of formation in 
a Christian home or religious school, or both, or in 
association with persons who possessed Christian 
attitudes. On the other hand, that single overt act 
will have the most far-reaching results upon the 
future experience of the child by determining his 
decision in details of conduct and in shaping his 
whole range of values and attitudes in his relation 
to his material and social world. But when every 
allowance has been made for the weighting of the 
present by its connection with the past and the 
future, it still remains that, when life is viewed as a 
process, the most significant moment is the present 
moment, with its own freightage of meaning and 
worth. The present is the forward-moving point that 
binds the past and the future into one continuous 
and expanding movement. Life is life whenever it is 
lived, and each moment of it has its own underived 
value for that and for no other reason. Life and the 
present are one. There is no other segment of the 
process in which it can be lived. 

These are the insights into the nature of expe- 
rience that have led to the discovery of the child in 
the modern world. From this viewpoint, growth 
is to be valued, not according to what it is not but 
according to what it is becoming. Growth is a posi- 
tive, not a negative, quality. In a changing, dy- 
namic world it even turns out that growth is an in- 
valuable characteristic of life at any stage. The 
danger of adult life lies precisely in this, that it 
shall lose its capacity for adaptation and readjust- 
ment in an infinitely complex and changing world. 
The loss of this capacity is the beginning of the end 
and marks a sharp descent to a cold and level plateau 
of unintelligent and fixed habit. One of the major 


68 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


problems of education is how to create the conditions 
of continuous growth so as to carry it forward into 
the conduct of adult life; that is, to carry forward 
the attitude of the child into adult life rather than 
bring the attitude of adult life forward into child- 
hood. It was this insight that seems to have led the 
Great Teacher to advance the view, as one of the 
fundamental requirements of the order that He 
came to establish, that unless the adult should be- 
come as the child he could not hope to enter the 
Kingdom of God. This is also the reason why the 
programmes of social improvement have come to 
locate their centre in child life. In the thinking of 
the modern world the growing child has come to 
have standing in his own right, and not by any 
retroactive quality of adulthood that projects its 
worth back over the barren foothills of its approaches. 

From the viewpoint of present worthful expe- 
rience, education becomes what Professor Dewey 
has significantly called the “‘reconstruction of expe- 
rience.” According to this concept as distinguished 
from the unfolding of latent inner powers, on the 
one hand, or the formation of the mind from with- 
out through instruction, on the other, experience is 
continuously moving forward toward the realization 
of ends. Through the perception of meaning in ex- 
perience whereby the connection between one bit 
of experience and another is perceived it becomes 
possible to reorganize experience in such a way that 
it leads directly to the attainment of ends that are 
consciously held before the mind, evaluated, and 
striven for. That is, experience becomes telic, and 
telic experience is experience under control. Telic 
experience, because it is selective, is constantly un- 
dergoing qualitative change. Those aspects of it 


THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE _ 69 


are selected and stressed that further it in the direc- 
tion of the goal; those are neglected or rejected that 
lead away from the goal or hinder movement toward 
the goal. The thinking through and adoption of 
policies in order to meet practical situations, the 
prescription of the physician in the light of certain 
symptoms for the restoring of health, or the accep- 
tance or rejection of certain ideals in order to attain 
a certain type of personal character—all these are 
instances of the qualitative reconstruction of expe- 
rience in order to the realization of selected ends. 
The affirmation of the worth of present expe- 
rience by no means implies that experience is to be 
accepted without criticism and evaluation. Certain 
types of experience are more valuable than others. 
One criterion by which they may be judged is the 
acceptance of certain standards of value. To the 
cultivated taste that has come to a thorough appre- 
ciation of the classical forms of music, jazz is worse 
than useless; it is destructive of the finer qualities 
of appreciation. A satisfying appreciation of the 
great forms of literature renders much of the ephem- 
eral periodical literature worthless or negative as a 
basis for one’s reading interests. To one who has 
formed certain attitudes of reverence, profanity be- 
comes repulsive or even an impossible form of ex- 
pression. This is the meaning and function of 
ideals. They are highly selective. Persons holding 
to certain bodies of ideals deliberately avoid certain 
types of experience that are not in keeping with 
these ideals or that are destructive of them while at 
the same time they deliberately seek those types of 
experience that are in keeping with these ideals. 
More particularly is the criterion to be found in the 
ebjectives toward which the individual and society 


70 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


are moving. Ends are extremely selective. Im- 
mediately an end is set up, those experiences are 
selected that further experience in the direction of 
that end, and those experiences that deter from it 
are rejected. The learner who is seeking to perfect 
himself in the technic of music, be it on the violin 
or the piano, deliberately sets apart a large section 
of each day for practice on his chosen instrument. 
It is even possible that the pursuit of this pur- 
pose may run straight across other impulses that 
call for other types of experience—the reading of 
a book, participation in social functions, seeking 
amusement or recreation, or perhaps lying in bed. 
But when impulses and desires conflict in this man- 
ner, there can be but one outcome—the dominant 
purpose that is determined by the chosen end must 
have the right of way. The function of education 
is to produce desirable changes. The function of 
education, therefore, is continuously to reconstruct 
present experience. Present experience furnishes not 
only the starting point in the reconstructive process 
but the materials upon which reconstruction may 
work. 

As must be apparent, the conception of the worth 
of present experience on its own account does not in 
the least preclude the value of present experience 
as a preparation for future experience. The error of 
the inherited view has been one of over-emphasis 
upon the future. It would be as fundamental an 
error to over-emphasize the present at the expense of 
either the past or the future. In human life, as in 
all vital processes, the present is the nexus between 
the past and the future. On the one hand, the present 
is the present of the past. On the other hand, the 
present will become the past of the future. The 


THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE 71 


past, present, and future are not separate elements, 
except in thought. They are nothing more than 
different aspects of the same undifferentiated process 
of the forward movement of life. The present can 
be the present of no other past; neither can it be 
the past of any other future. It follows, therefore, 
that the present derives much of its value from the 
future, to which it leads through the concatenation 
of antecedent and consequent. The detailed con- 
sideration of the significance of this continuum be- 
tween the past, present, and future must be de- 
ferred until a later chapter. It is sufficient at this 
point to guard ourselves against the costly error of 
the past which may arise through placing such an 
exclusive emphasis upon either the past, the present, 
or the future as to isolate them from the continuing 
whole of which each is an integral part, with a 
value all its own and yet a value that cannot be 
exclusively affirmed in total isolation from the whole. 


VI 
THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 


Wuen the curriculum is conceived in terms of en- 
riched and controlled experience, the primary con- 
cern that at once confronts the educator is an in- 
quiry into the nature of experience and the technic 
of its control. He must determine what is involved 
in personality. He must acquaint himself with the 
manner in which the experience which persons have 
arises; he must analyze it for its factors; he must 
ascertain how far it is a mechanism with predeter- 
mined outcomes or how far: conscious purpose can 
enter into its redirection, and how; he must take 
account of the immediate and permanent outcomes 
of experience. 

As was suggested in the opening paragraphs of 
Chapter IV, the approach to the understanding of 
personality is through seeing it as a continuum of 
experience—a succession from moment to moment 
of particular experiences that arrange themselves in 
a sequence in such a way that one experience leads 
directly to another in a genetic process. 

But personality is more than a bare continuum of 
experience. At the centre of this continuum is a 
self that gives organization and continuity to ex- 
perience. It reaches out toward its world in an 
effort to adapt the resources of that world to its 
needs. That is to say, its activity is directed toward 
ends that it seeks to realize. These needs are set by 
the needs and desires of the self, and are concerned 

72 


THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 73 


with its survival or well-being. It is this telic nature 
of the self that gives experience its movement, direc- 
tion, and drive. Certain types of experience bring 
the self satisfaction while others bring it annoyance 
or pain. Those experiences are satisfying that lead 
toward and are consummated in the realization of 
desired ends. Those experiences are annoying that 
delay or frustrate experience in its movement toward 
desired ends. 

But what is even more significant, especially for 
education, this self is not an entity that is given or 
complete. It is at all times a becoming. As a result 
of this process of growth, personality is the outcome 
of a process of self-realization. As a consequence, 
personality is constantly undergoing change as it 
moves forward increasingly toward the realization 
of its objectives. To be sure, the self may quite as 
readily undergo disintegration and deterioration as 
it may advance, according to the quality and the 
organization of the ends or the precision and energy 
with which it moves toward them. It is even pos- 
sible for a self to become deranged or fall in pieces 
when its ends become disorganized or confused. 

It is in and through meaningful experience that 
persons realize themselves. The self is not expe- 
rience. It is that active, perceiving, and organizing 
something that has experiences. Without a self to 
which events are present and for which they have 
meaning there can be no experience. It is this self- 
realizing something that binds events together and 
gives them meaning and purpose. An event is not 
an experience until it has meaning and significance 
for a self Moreover, its meaning and significance 
are to be sought in the bearing, either immediate or 
remote, of the event upon the self-realization of a 


74 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


person—its relation to values that give worth to a 
person’s existence. Experience may, therefore, be 
said to consist of that body of meanings that emerge 
from events as they appear in perception and that 
hover over the stream of activity, by which it is 
possible to perceive the connection of one event with 
another, particularly as antecedent and consequent, 
so that the consequences of an event may be dis- 
cerned, especially as they bear upon the welfare of 
the self. In this way experience is subordinated to 
self, and it is possible for the self-conscious and self- 
directing person to reconstruct his experience with 
reference to outcomes that to him are worthful. 

It is clear, therefore, that experience is the out- 
growth of the process of the adjustment of the self- 
realizing person to his world. In terms of adjust- 
ment, experience may be defined as the response of 
persons to their world, with meaning. 

In this adjustment process it is the self-realizing 
person who makes the response. By native inheri- 
tance the potential self is endowed with impulses 
that form the basis of its desires and that lead it 
to assume a preferential, evaluating set toward its 
world. This gives it an active and adaptive attitude 
toward its world. On the lower levels of activity 
these native impulses are blind and unconscious. 
They appear simply as predispositions to adaptive 
activity. On the higher levels they rise into con- 
sciousness, get themselves reflected upon and criti- 
cised, and are organized into a body of desires. That 
is to say, desire becomes conscious and rational 
and centred in an organized set of values. It is in 
and through the satisfaction of their desires, and 
particularly of their criticised and organized desires, 
that persons realize themselves. The highest level 


THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 75 


of personal self-realization is reached when persons 
desire to have certain kinds of desire. By this proc- 
ess of higher self-criticism desires tend to become 
socialized, ethicized, and spiritualized. 

The world to which persons respond is both ma- 
terial and social. The material world consists of the 
objects, forces, and processes of nature. It involves 
such items as food, climate, soil, elevation, and natu- 
ral resources. This aspect of the adjustment process 
lies in the field of the natural sciences and of those 
practical activities that have to do with such needs 
as food, shelter, clothing, and with the manipulation 
of raw materials in the various stages of their fabri- 
cation. It constitutes a world of things. 

On the other hand, the social environment con- 
sists of other persons, of the social inheritance of 
custom, tradition, knowledge, and institutions, and 
of the innumerable traces that man has left upon 
material things. The person-to-be is born into a 
social medium. From the very beginning he finds 
himself in the presence of other persons. Moreover, 
these other persons are in the process of realizing 
themselves as he is. His own sense of self as dis- 
tinguished from other persons grows up out of the 
process by which he adjusts himself to other grow- 
ing selves. This relation of persons to other persons 
is largely mediated through their common use of 
their material world. Self is, therefore, a creation, . 
a product not only of the potential self reacting 
upon its material environment but of one self re- 
acting upon other selves. 

The social environment is much greater, however, 
than appears in the actual presence of otber persons. 
The results of persons having lived in the past in 
relation to their material environment and to each 


76 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


other are preserved in what has come to be called 
the “‘social inheritance.”’ This consists of an accu- 
mulation of the thoughts, ideals, points of view, 
traditions, institutions, and customs that have been 
handed on to the present generation by generations 
that have lived and thought and labored since a 
forgotten past. As a matter of fact, this social in- 
heritance determines to a very large extent one’s 
material environment, because of its highly selective 
influence upon the surrounding world of things. It 
directs attention to certain aspects of that world 
while at the same time it diverts attention from other 
aspects. It gives to each mind that is born into it 
a certain “set”? which causes it to become vividly 
conscious of certain elements in its environment 
while at the same time it is wholly oblivious to 
others. The effect of this influence is seen, in large 
measure, in the food and dress habits of different 
peoples. It is especially evident in such matters as 
discoveries and inventions where the race through 
countless generations has lived in the physical pres- 
ence of such substances as radium or such forces as 
electricity without perceiving them or their signifi- 
cance until a certain volume of social experience had 
been accumulated that served to focus attention 
upon them. Thus it turns out that such a matter 
as a discovery or an invention which on the surface 
appears to be the result of individual insight and 
genius is, in reality, fundamentally a social process. 
Precisely the same thing is true of intellectual in- 
sight or of the formulation of social policies. A 
closer scrutiny discloses the fact that the outstand- 
ing thinker or creative statesman who seems at first 
glance to stand out in utter isolation from his fel- 
lows is, in reality, the outcropping into clear con- 


THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 77 


sciousness of deep-lying and wide-extending strata 
of social thought, feeling, and purpose. 

Even when one scrutinizes his “material” envi- 
ronment it becomes extremely difficult to distinguish 
between that which is purely material and that 
which is human and social. The desk on which I 
write these lines is far from being a purely ma- 
terial “thing.” Its materials, having been felled by 
human hands from some distant forest and mined 
from the depths of the mountains, have been trans- 
ported by human intelligence and energy working 
through material forces. It has been fabricated by 
human hands skilled in their craft. Its appoint- 
ments of compartments are the result of many years 
of experience in meeting the needs of men of my 
profession. Similarly, my pen seems, on second 
thought, to contain less of the “thing” element 
than of the human. ‘The rubber of its barrel was 
gathered by persons of another race in a far distant 
continent. Its gold and iridium have been mined by 
others of my fellows in distant parts of my own or 
other continents. Its design gathers up into itself 
the race-long history of man’s invention of writing 
and of his search for an instrument to record his 
thought. So also with the telephone at my elbow. 
At first glance it seems to be an inanimate “thing.” 
But upon reflection I see over it the countless mem- 
bers of a race that through millenniums have been 
communicating their thoughts, feelings, and pur- 
poses to each other. Back of it is the long history 
of human speech. It gathers up into itself as a sym- 
bol the history of man’s methods of communication. 
It stands at the end of a long line of inventions that 
have given wings to thought. While I contemplate 
it, it may become alive at the summons of its bell. 


78 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


That summons is the call of another person some- 
where in my outlying world. When I take down my 
receiver there is the voice of another person at the 
other end of the wire. As he speaks, the instrument 
pulsates with thought, friendship, baffling personal 
problem, joy, or the pathos of suffering, defeat, 
tragedy. From this secluded study with its friendly 
grate and shelves of books I may, through this in- 
strument, reach out at will across great distances 
and speak with my friends. Who will attempt to 
place his finger upon the sharp line that separates 
that which is “thing” from that which is “person” 
in that instrument? Would one journey by rail? 
Would he ride in his car in the open country along 
the white ribbons of road that stretch across the 
green fields? Would he voyage upon the sea? It is 
all the same. There now remains practically no spot 
where he can go without finding himself in the pres- 
ence of the transforming and humanizing touch of 
man upon his material environment. 

This is true because man and nature develop 
reciprocally. In a remote, forgotten past a crude 
and undeveloped race of primitive men faced an 
equally crude and undeveloped material world. In 
man were the capacities of growth—intelligence, de- 
sires, impulses to action. Over against him in nature 
reposed the resources and the obstacles which man 
would use or overcome in his effort to satisfy his de- 
sires. The forests were there with their uncut, unfash- 
ioned timbers; the mountains contained their rich de- 
posits of minerals; the plains and valleys stretched 
before him with their fertile soil; watercourses and 
passes led away into the unknown. With the coming 
of man, the forests were felled and the timbers fash- 
ioned into dwellings or the keels of ships; the ores 





THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 79 


were mined and fashioned into tools; the valleys 
were covered with grains and fruits; watercourses 
and passes became trails and highways; cities rose 
from the plains; custom was written into constitu- 
tions and laws; knowledge and achievement flowed 
into the moulds of culture; civilization was attained. 
As man developed, nature developed. Only it was 
at the initiative of man that the transformation of 
both himself and his material world took place. 
Moreover, it was in and through man’s reaction 
upon his material world, which, as the process of de- 
velopment went on, became more and more satu- 
rated with the human element, that man’s capaci- 
ties of thought, feeling, criticism, valuation, choice, 
and sustained purpose were evoked. At the present 
moment in man’s career intelligent, spiritual, devel- 
oped man faces a transformed world—a world that 
has yielded to his purpose and will, and yet a world 
that has inflicted upon him the marks of submis- 
sion, sometimes defeat, sometimes tragedy. Man 
is in part what he is at this stage of his career, be- 
cause he has had to adapt himself beyond certain 
limits of necessity to the stubborn, unyielding forces 
about him. Judging from what has come to pass 
thus far, one would be a venturesome soul who 
would attempt to predict what further qualities of 
the human, the ethical, the social, and the spiritual 
that may be resident in man’s capacities may yet 
be evoked by his dealing with a world that has at 
its centre personal and spiritual forces. Nor would 
it take a less courageous soul to predict what latent 
but undiscovered qualities In what we have called 
the “‘natural’’ world lie waiting to spring into action 
at his touch. In any case, this much is clear, that 
God has not yet finished His creation, for the proc- 


80 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


ess is going on under our very eyes at every out- 
reach of the human spirit after the yielding sub- 
stances of “‘the enveloping whole.” 

As has been suggested, the initial aspect of the 
adjustment process arises out of the dynamic and con- 
trol activities of the person. It assumes the form 
of adapting the environment to the self in an effort 
to meet its needs and to satisfy its desires. But there 
are limits to the ability of persons to adapt their 
environment to themselves. It is at the point of the 
limit of control that experience takes on another 
aspect. Since the person can no longer adapt his 
world to himself, he must adapt himself to the re- 
quirements of his world. Thus, up to certain limits 
man can adapt his climate to his requirements by 
the use of warm shelter, fuel, and clothing. But even 
so, seventy-five per cent of the American people live 
between the isotherms of forty-five and sixty de- 
grees. So also an individual person may change to 
a certain extent the customs of society and its way 
of looking at things; beyond these limits he must 
conform or suffer the consequences that society ad- 
ministers to those who differ too widely from its 
approved modes of thought and action. For this 
reason experience assumes two aspects—the active 
and the passive, the controlling and the submissive. 

It may be said, therefore, that one’s world is the 
world of experience. That and that only is one’s 
world wherein these adjustments to things and per- 
sons, and what persons have thought, felt, and done, 
is going on. Its extent and meaning are determined 
wholly by the number and variety of one’s adjust- 
ments to that world. The expansion of one’s world 
can be measured by the increase in the number and 
variety of his adjustments. It is just this matter of 


THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 81 


the number and range of the points of adjustment 
of the organism to its world that determines its 
position on an ascending scale of life as measured 
by its richness and meaning. The amoeba has the 
fewest possible contacts at which it makes an adjust- 
ment to its world. Its functions are limited to secur- 
ing nutrition, reproduction, and a minimum amount 
of locomotion. Its habitat is limited to an extremely 
circumscribed area, and the span of its life to a 
brief period of time. Its bony, nervous, muscular, 
digestive, and circulatory systems are almost wholly 
undifferentiated. Its meagre range of adjustment 
limits it to the lowest orders of life. As organic life 
advances, however, the number and range of con- 
tacts and points of adjustment with the surrounding 
world increases. The structure is differentiated into 
skeleton, musculature, nervous system, circulatory 
system, respiratory system, digestive system, and 
the various highly specialized organs. In man there 
is sensitivity to all sorts of stimuli and the capacity 
to make all sorts of responses. Man’s habitat is ex- 
tended to the entire planet, while his delicate instru- 
ments of science enable him to form contacts with 
such minute particles as the electron and to extend 
his intelligent relations into an infinite expanse of 
space. Through his records the past is made to live 
in the present and he has the power to project his 
purposes and projects into a future that has not 
yet been realized. 

It follows that, while the adjustments that are 
socially shared predominate, no two persons or 
groups live in precisely the same world. Thus a 
scientist and an artist, living in the same community 
and surrounded by the same material and social en- 
vironment, actually live in measurably different 


82 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


worlds because they are adjusted to different com- 
binations of stimuli. The scientist may be inter- 
ested in the fauna or flora of the region and make a 
careful study of the origin, characteristics, and dis- 
tribution of various forms of organic life. Or he 
may be interested in the geological formations or 
mineral deposits of the region. The artist, on the 
other hand, responds to the configuration of the 
landscape, the masses of mountains rising in impres- 
sive grandeur, or the lovely expanse of sea sweep- 
ing away to the horizon. The world of each is his 
world of experience, and his experience rests back 
upon the combinations of stimuli to which he makes 
response. In less obvious but not less real ways, 
the world in which each person lives is his own par- 
ticular world arising out of the selectiveness of his 
sensitivity and response. 

As the activity arising out of the adjustment 
process by which persons relate themselves to their 
world, experience conforms to the situation-bond- 
response pattern. Under analysis experience breaks 
up into three primary factors. The first is what the 
psychologist calls the “situation.” By a situation 
the psychologist means a more or less definitely or- 
ganized set of stimuli that are capable of evoking a 
response from persons. Thus a situation may pre- 
sent only a single stimulus, as when light of a cer- 
tain intensity causes the opening or contraction of 
the pupil of the eye, or when the falling of an object 
creates a sound that attracts the attention of an 
otherwise engaged person. On the other hand, the 
situation may present a number of highly complex 
stimuli, as when one listens to an orchestra with its 
many instruments, or when one is confronted with 
a problem involving a moral decision or the deter- 


THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 83 


mination of a question of practical policy. Similarly, 
the stimuli themselves may vary in character over 
a wide range. They may be purely physical, as in 
the case of food; they may be social, as when one 
responds to the presence of other persons, whether 
in the primary or the secondary social groups; they 
may consist of ideas, suggestions, customs, public 
opinion, or ideals. As not infrequently happens, a 
situation may present a combination of many or all 
of these varieties of stimuli. Thus, for example, the 
presence of food before a hungry person constitutes 
the core of a situation; but into that elemental situa- 
tion may be drawn a wide variety of accompanying 
elements such as the presence of other persons at 
table, the entire milieu of social custom regulating 
the etiquette of dining, and the presence of enjoy- 
able and stimulating conversation. But in whatever 
form these situations may present themselves, the 
adjustment process consists in meeting, one after 
another, the situations put forward by the material 
and the social environment. 

The second factor in experience is the response 
which the person makes to the situations he en- 
counters. Responses vary through a wide range of 
qualitative differences. A response may be merely 
motor, as when the hand is withdrawn from contact 
with a sharp object. It may be predominantly emo- 
tional, as in the case of a paroxysm of grief which a 
mother may have upon receiving news of the death 
of her son. It may be almost entirely intellectual, 
as when a scientist formulates a hypothesis that 
seems most satisfactorily to account for a series of 
phenomena. Or it may combine all these elements 
of motor reaction, emotion, and critical intelligence, 
as is the case, in rational and purposive conduct, 


84 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


when there is sustained effort directed toward the 
attainment of ends that have been criticised ac- 
cording to a standard of organized values or in car- 
rying to completion a programme of social re- 
form. Purposive activity is the highest form of 
experience of which human nature is capable. Such 
activity centres in the will, is directed by intelli- 
gence, and is accompanied and warmed by emotion, 
particularly when it involves fundamental instincts 
or Is accompanied by a degree of delay, uncertainty, 
or effort. It follows, therefore, that responses may 
take place on three more or less definite levels. If 
the response is to a situation that is definite and 
recurrent and involves only a minor part of the 
organism, it will take place on the basis of a reflex, 
as in the case of the quick closing of the eye when 
irritated by a particle of dust or an insect. If the 
response is to a relatively definite situation that has 
been recurrent during the history of the race and 
the race’s ancestors, and involves the entire organ- 
ism, it will take place on the instinctive level, as 
in the case of food, sex, and defense activities. The 
patterns of reflexive and instinctive responses are 
determined before birth. Instinctive responses, as 
in the case of reflexive responses, are mechanical 
and for the most part unconscious, except that they 
are accompanied by emotion and reflection in some 
cases but are not determined by them. In fact, con- 
scious reflection tends to disarrange the response 
mechanism in these cases. If, on the other hand, 
the situation is complex, especially if it is novel 
and involves alternatives among which choice must 
be made, the response is made on the level of reflec- 
tive intelligence and sustained will. This is the 
highest type of response of which human nature is 


THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 85 


capable. It is the matrix from which emerges the 
highest form of human experience, weighted as it is 
with critical judgment, intelligent choice, ideals, and 
evaluated purposes. It is the type of experience of 
which human nature alone is capable. This is not 
to affirm that reflexes and instincts do not form the 
pattern of a large part of human behavior, for they 
do. But distinctively human experience lifts away 
from the low-lying levels of mechanical behavior to 
the higher plateaus of intelligent and purposive be- 
havior. When discrimination, critical judgment, 
choice, and purpose enter into behavior, it is trans- 
formed into conduct. It becomes responsible. 

The third factor in experience is the bond that 
unites the situation and the response into one con- 
tinuous process which may be designated as a unit 
of behavior. The bond is that something that takes 
place within the nervous system that provides that 
when the situation is presented it will normally be 
followed by its appropriate response. In the mechan- 
istic responses, namely reflexes and instincts, the 
bond is so definite and fixed that, given the same 
conditions in the environment and the responding 
organism, the response will always be the same 
and is, therefore, predictable. This is not true in 
anything like the same degree when the bond con- 
sists of reflective choice. By their very nature, re- 
flexive and instinctive responses have to do with 
recurrent situations to which there is only one gen- 
eral outcome; by its nature the situation that evokes 
reflection and deliberate choice is extremely inde- 
finite and_is capable of more than one, and often 
of many outcomes. It is, on that account, impossible 
to predict with anything like certainty what the 
outcome of any given reflective response may be. 


86 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


It is only after certain attitudes, habits, and con- 
trolling purposes have been built up that it is pos- 
sible to forecast within reasonable limits of confi- 
dence what course the conduct of a given person may 
take. 

Owing to the nature of the bonds that unite situa- 
tions and responses, namely the mechanistic and 
what we may call the purposive-reflective, each type 
yields vastly different educational possibilities. Be- 
cause the mechanistic bond is so definite and fixed, 
its educability is relatively limited. On the other 
hand, because the purposive-reflective bond is so 
indefinite and modifiable by many factors, its edu- 
eability is relatively very great. Education by 
means of the mechanistic bonds tends in the direc- 
tion of training; education by means of the modifica- 
tion of the purposive-reflective bond tends in the 
direction of conscious, reflective, and purposive re- 
direction of experience through the choice of alter- 
natives that are in keeping with the highest ideals 
of the race and the ongoing purposes of the Kingdom 
of God. Education through the mechanistic bonds 
lies chiefly in control by factors outside the learner, 
first in the determination of hereditary tendencies, 
and second in their manipulation through pleasur- 
able or painful consequences and the building up of 
permanent habits. Education through the purpo- 
sive-reflective bond lies chiefly m inner control 
whereby the learner, in co-operation with the mature 
members of the group, redirects his own experience 
in view of certain selected objectives. It is clear 
that while certain forms of education are best ac- 
complished through the mechanistic bonds, moral 
and religious education in particular must be accom- 
plished chiefly through the purposive-reflective bond. 


THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 87 


In the light of the preceding paragraph it is 
scarcely necessary to add a word concerning the 
relative merits of the mechanistic and the purposive 
interpretation of behavior. Experience in any case 
has to do with behavior of one sort or another. It 
is sufficient, doubtless, to direct attention to the 
fact that a mechanistic conception by no means 
exhausts the meaning of experience or accounts for 
it. It is equally true that indiscriminate insistence 
upon the purposive character of experience over- 
accounts for it. An analysis of the bond that unites 
situation and response in experience discloses the 
fact that there are different types of bonds that 
unite situations and responses on the different 
levels of experience. The mechanistic bonds are an 
inheritance from man’s animal ancestry; the pur- 
posive bond appears to be an achievement of human 
nature, and makes possible the distinctively human 
elements in experience. It is with the latter bond 
that the future of the advancement of the race lies 
as it moves away from racial habits and precedents 
into the unexplored frontiers of experience and 
achievement. It operates in the realm of ideals, of 
motives, of organized values, of purposes. It is m 
this field that the remaking of human nature is pos- 
sible. It is to this point that religion, with its ob- 
jective in the radical and continuous reconstruction 
of human nature, addresses itself. Mechanism is 
hopeless as an instrument for such a creative under- 
taking as religion attempts. The objective of re- 
ligious education is the creation of a type of person 
whose behavior is brought under the control of 
Christian ideals and purposes. The only instru- 
ments that will serve at this level of creative expe- 
rience are choice and purpose. This is by no means 


88 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


to be interpreted as suggesting that the inner ten- 
dencies which are basic in all education shall be 
undervalued or neglected; it does mean that they 
shall be subordinated to the higher and distinctively 
human factors of experience. 

It will be apparent from what has been said thus 
far that human experience is active, dynamic, con- 
trolling. As a matter of fact, all experience on what- 
ever level is predominantly that. It is an outreach- 
ing after ends whose ability to bring satisfaction is 
determined by the urgency of inner tendencies. All 
activity tends to gravitate toward the conative type. 
But in human experience, especially in human ex- 
perience of the higher sort, this is pre-eminently so. 
Experience is predominantly telic. That is to say, 
it moves, on the whole, in the realm of values. Psy- 
chologically, value is that worth which attaches to 
objects in the environment that are desired. They 
possess value because they have the capacity to 
give satisfaction to man’s original nature. Thus 
desire and value are merely different aspects of the 
same undifferentiated process of outreaching toward 
our world in an effort to possess it or to control it. 
Desire exists in persons; it is subjective. Value at- 
taches to objects; it is objective. It is the desire- 
value relation to our world that causes persons to 
put forth effort in an attempt to control it or to 
realize upon it. 

It is characteristic of experience that when satis- 
faction follows the response the bond between the 
situation and the response tends to be strengthened, 
whereas when the response is followed by annoy- 
ance the bond between the situation and the re- 
sponse tends to be destroyed. In the case of the 
instinctive bond, satisfaction comes when the ap- 


THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 89 


propriate unit in the nervous system is “ready” to 
‘“conduct”’ the impulse from the situation to the 
response, and when the “conducting” actually takes 
place. A response is annoying when the conduction 
unit is not “ready” but is forced to “conduct.” It 
is also annoying when the conduction unit is “ready” 
and begins to “‘conduct,’’ but is unable to complete 
the conducting. In the case of the purposive-reflec- 
tive bond, the response that brings satisfaction is 
the one that is in conformity with a certain organ- 
ized set of desires and values, and that furthers 
one in the direction of the attainment of those 
values. That response is painful that is out of keep- 
ing with approved desires or that obstructs the 
attainment of worthy ends. The highest reach of 
human nature is the capacity to organize desires 
and values into coherent systems, so that certain 
desires are subordinated to other desires. In this 
process certain desires are disapproved, so that it 
turns out that their realization brings the keenest 
regret to the one who indulges them. Similarly, cer- 
tain desires are set above all others, so that their 
attainment at whatever cost brings the highest satis- 
faction known to man, and that can only be ex- 
pressed by the terms “‘peace” and “‘joy.” 

Through the strengthening of the bond that unites 
situation and response, experience tends to fall into 
certain modes of activity. Habits are formed. A 
response becomes established so firmly that when- 
ever the situation appears the response is almost cer- 
tain to appear. Attitudes are built up. Ideals are 
formulated: Continuing purposes are organized. In 
this way experience exercises a selective influence 
upon situations. Once this preferential attitude has 
been set up, the person or group becomes insensible 


909 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


to some situations while it becomes exceedingly sen- 
sitive to others. Thus a person who has come to re- 
gard intemperance as degrading and unworthy of 
his organized ideals and purposes becomes insensible 
to situations that would have the effect of bringing 
one to the condition of an inebriate. While this is 
especially true, in the first instance, of the instinc- 
tive bond, it is, in the second instance, no less true 
of the purposive bond. One cannot be forever re- 
deciding issues in situations that offer alternative 
courses of conduct. Once he has thought his prob- 
lem through and reached a decision that is approved 
by his ideals and purposes, it 1s better, in the inter- 
est of efficient and economical living, that the re- 
sponse be reduced to habit. Thus, if a boy decides 
that it is better to tell the truth under all circum- 
stances, it will be better if thereafter he expends his 
energy in discovering what the truth in a given 
situation is and proceeds to tell 1t without reopen- 
ing the fundamental problem of ethical duty. In 
this way conduct tends to fall into certain fairly 
well-marked grooves of habit that give it steadiness 
and that, in themselves, constitute certain modes of 
control. 

Only it should be added that in the higher forms 
of conduct it is imperative that habits should main- 
tain a certain degree of flexibility, so that they may 
be departed from at any moment when the judg- 
ment ceases to approve the course of action which 
they indicate as being no longer in fullest con- 
formity to reality or the highest ideals. Allowance 
must be made in education for this flexibility and 
growth of experience. In fact, this should be one of 
the objectives at which education aims—a capa- 
city for ready readjustment to the changing condi- 


0 a 


THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 91 


tions and demands of actual life. Whenever habits 
are allowed to become so completely rigid that they 
interfere with a ready readjustment of conduct to 
new facts in experience, they become a hindrance 
rather than a help in the building of a stable and 
dependable character. 

In these ways experience leaves a certain deposit 
that is permanent and cumulative. All experience in 
its first state is more or less a trial-and-error ap- 
proach to our world. Some ways of responding 
prove successful, while others are failures. As a re- 
sult of the trial-and-error approach we learn things 
through experience. This constitutes a body of 
ideas, of knowledge, of technic, that is handed down 
from one generation to another. Customs, which are 
nothing more than social habits, are built up and 
passed on to those who come after. Attitudes are 
assumed that are communicated to others and be- 
come control factors in the lives of individuals and 
groups. As a matter of fact, once these attitudes 
and customs are established, one who is born into 
them takes them over unconsciously but acts ac- 
cording to them none the less surely. Sets of values 
are set up and inherited also, as are certain points 
of view and certain ways of doing things. These, 
in their cumulative form, furnish the substance of 
civilization. 


Vil 
HOW EXPERIENCE IS ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED 


Ir is evident from an inquiry into the nature of ex- 
perience that experiences differ greatly in their rich- 
ness of meaning and content and in their educational 
possibilities. Some experiences are meagre and their 
possibilities are quickly exhausted; others are rich 
in content and are capable of sustaining a large 
range of intellectual, social, ethical, and spiritual 
values over long periods of time. Some experiences 
arise out of responses to situations that are rela- 
tively simple and fixed and that are capable of 
evoking only a single and simple response; others 
arise out of multiple situations that are rich in 
stimuli, any one of which is capable of evoking its 
own response, thus yielding multiple responses that 
involve choice among alternatives. Some experi- 
ences arise out of situations that are recurrent and 
therefore quickly fall into well-worn and smooth 
grooves of habit; others are novel and constantly 
changing and call for thought and open-mindedness 
toward one’s world. Some experiences are almost 
entirely confined to the present situation; others 
possess a quality of expansiveness that causes them 
to fray out into an infinite number of relations and 
implications which set other experiences going in 
manifold directions. Some experiences are almost 
wholly individual; others are rich in social relations 
and functions. 

The enrichment of experience is a concept that 
relates itself immediately to the self-realization of 

92 


ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 93 


persons. It is only when an experience, which in 
itself cannot exist apart from persons, is referred to 
persons that its richness or poverty appears. For 
this reason what is a rich experience for one person 
may be thin, disappointing, or repulsive for another. 
The same is true of the social experience of groups 
which are aggregations of like-minded persons with 
shared thoughts, desires, and purposes. Further- 
more, since it is in and through their experiences 
that persons realize themselves, those experiences 
further self-realization most that are, to particular 
persons and groups, rich in content. 

The enrichment of experience takes place in two 
primary directions. One is through the range and 
depth of meaning which an experience carries. 
Meaning, in turn, arises from two aspects of an ex- 
perience—its interrelatedness with other types of 
experience and its relation to its own past and future 
through antecedent and consequent. So funda- 
mental is this conception of the continuity of expe- 
rience that it must receive detailed discussion under 
the origin and function of knowledge in Chapter 
VIII, and under the principles of the continuity of 
experience in Chapter X. But for the purpose of 
making clear the concept of enrichment the most 
general statement of the principle is made in this 
connection. Meaning arises primarily out of the 
perception of antecedents and consequents in expe- 
riences. That is to say, a present experience means 
something because it is perceived to be the outcome 
of previous-experiences. In like manner a present 
experience means something because it will have 
consequences for the future; that is, it will lead to 
something else. It is this continuity of antecedent 
and consequent in experience that gives to expe- 


94 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


rience movement, direction, momentum. And it is 
because of this movement and direction that it has 
immediate bearing upon the self-realization of per- 
sons. As a result of this movement and direction 
persons not only find themselves in new situations 
as experience moves forward, but they themselves 
are changed: they are not the same persons. It is 
just this insight into the nature of experience as a 
moving and changing thing that makes it possible, 
through perceiving its meaning, to redirect it by 
changing the ends toward which it moves. 

A second source for the enrichment of experience 
is its worth. The worth of any experience is deter- 
mined by the satisfaction which it brings to persons. 
Whether or not an experience is satisfying depends 
upon whether or not it results m the satisfaction of 
desires through the attainment of the ends toward 
which the yearning outreach of the person is ex- 
tended. That experience is satisfying which closes 
the gap between desire and the end toward which it 
reaches. That is, the attainment of the end is the 
satisfaction of desire. Ends, however, are intensely 
personal. What, therefore, is a satisfying experience 
to one may be uninteresting or even repulsive 
to another. The inebriate finds satisfaction in the 
stimulation that comes from drink. To the moral 
idealist such an experience, even when observed in 
another, is repulsive. To have such an experience 
would, for him, be disgusting and degrading in the 
extreme. His satisfaction comes from the gratifica- 
tion of higher desires through the realization of their 
corresponding ends. Thus, any given experience, 
let us say of listening to a noble bit of music, will 
have the widest possible ranges of worth to different 
persons: one will be utterly bored by it; another 





ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 95 


will see in it nothing worth spending time or money 
upon; still another will be thrilled by its harmonies 
and will feel that his whole being has been refined 
and inspired as by an intangible spiritual influence. 
Thus the worth of an experience to different persons 
swings through a wide arc from that which is neu- 
tral to that which is negative and destructive, on 
the one hand, and to that which is positive and cre- 
ative, on the other. The same thing is true with 
reference to social groups with their more or less 
organized sets of values. Thus a social programme 
that would satisfy a proletarian group would be 
utterly unacceptable to a capitalistic group, or con- 
versely, for the reasons that the ends which each 
desires to see accomplished are directly antagon- 
istic to the ends which the other desires to see re- 
alized. An enriched experience may be said, then, 
to be an experience that is meaningful and satisfy- 
ing. But what an experience “means” or “is worth” 
depends entirely upon the values held by a person 
or group of persons. 

At this point there emerges the second concept 
in this discussion. What is to be understood by the 
concept of control? 

Control may mean, on the one hand, the compul- 
sion, by the use of forces external to the person 
controlled, of one person or group of persons by 
another. It may assume the form of the coercion 
of one individual by another, of the individual by 
the institution or the social group, or of the masses 
by a powerful leader or minority. It assumes, in 
most instances, the control of the individual by 
the social group. In any case, the one who is under 
control is passive and obedient, while the one con- 


_ trolling is active and domineering. Always it con- 


96 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


sists of the imposition of the will and purposes of 
one upon another. 

The instruments for the securing of external con- 
trol have been many and varied. In its crudest aspect 
control has assumed the form of physical force. It 
is in this way that the state enforces its sovereignty 
upon its unwilling members by force to the utter- 
most, ultimately through military power. Another 
direct method of control has been through laws and 
regulations. These external devices have, in the last 
resort, depended upon an appeal to force to secure 
obedience to them, though advanced peoples ac- 
quire a legal attitude which renders an appeal to 
force less frequent. Physical force, however, is by 
no means the most effective instrument of external 
social control. Beyond certain limits force becomes 
self-limiting. Even more powerful instruments of 
control may be found among psychological influences. 
Among these are the various forms of social pressure 
of a non-preinstituted character which are made 
effective through various forms of approval or dis- 
approval. Onc of the most effective forms of social 
control is prejudice, created by the withholding of 
facts, or the casting of the mind’s action into the 
grooves of class, racial, partisan, or religious pre- 
suppositions. These prejudices form a kind of 
smooth rim around the mind from which thought 
rebounds inwardly upon itself. As a result, persons, 
without suspecting it, are slavishly bound to their 
group and to its ways of looking at things. No less 
effective is the obedience and conformity secured 
by the forming of rigid and unintelligent habits by 
the mature members of the group in the young dur- 
ing the period of their helpless immaturity, when 
they have neither the capacity nor the experience 


ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 97 


necessary to make an intelligent choice of the per- 
manent habits that are to dominate their later de- 
velopment, thus preventing a free and continuous 
personal growth. Not infrequently has education 
itself been used to coerce the minds of the young 
through selected information, mental bias, or fixed 
prejudices. Because of its very effectiveness in de- 
termining the minds of the young, education lends 
itself in an unusual manner to purposes of propa- 
ganda in the hands of powerful and interested lead- 
ers. Among all the instruments of external control 
none has historically proven more effective, and at 
the same time more destructive, than fear. 

At the opposite extreme from external control is 
guidance. Guidance works from within. In it the 
initiative is shared by both the teacher and the 
learner. Both are active. (Guidance is secured 
through understanding, through the sharing of ex- 
periences and purposes, and through friendly coun- 
sel. The objective of guidance is not to weight, least 
of all to overbear, the judgment and will of the 
learner. The function of mature guidance is to help 
the immature to understand the situation in which 
he finds himself, to break it up into its constituent 
factors without overlooking important elements, to 
help him feel and understand the problems involved, 
to stimulate the suggestion of possible outcomes, to 
assist him in discovering relevant sources of in- 
formation, to assist him in arriving at a choice after 
he has thought its consequences through, and to 
encourage him to overcome obstacles and to per- 
sist until he has seen his decision through. That is 
to say, guidance is co-operative control. In it there 
is a meeting of minds and purposes. In it there is 
the desire on the part of the learner to understand 


98 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


sympathetically and appreciatively the inherited 
points of view and processes of the mature members 
of society, and an equal desire on the part of the 
mature members ot the group that these inherited 
points of view and processes should be freshly eriti- 
cised and modified to meet the requirements of the 
oncoming generation. In this way racial experience 
is steadied and given continuity and at the same 
time room is made for continuous reconstruction 
and improvement. : 

It thus appears that the concept of self-realization 
through the enrichment of experience and the concept 
of social control are not irreconcilable. They are me- 
diated in and through guidance that passes on to the 
learner the ideals, possessions, and purposes of the 
group, that socializes him, and that at the same time 
assists him in securing a firmness and certainty in his 
control over his own experience. The continuity of 
the interests of society is guaranteed by the presence 
within society of individuals who have attained the 
highest degree of self-realization, but who are, at the 
same time, thoroughly socialized in their attitudes 
and motives. On the other hand, as was pointed 
out in the discussion concerning the nature of per- 
sonality, it is impossible to achieve a sense of self- 
hood, much less to arrive at the highest degree of 
self-realization, except within ‘a free social medium 
in which persons are reacting upon persons. 

We must, consequently, add to our two initial 
sources for the enrichment of experience, namely, 
meaning and worth, a third—the control of expe- 
rience in the form of guidance. From the viewpoint 
of a self-realizing person as well as of the social group, 
an experience that is not under control is capricious, 
unreliable, dangerous, unsatisfying. Leading no- 





ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 99 


where in particular, it is impossible that such an 
experience should further the person toward the 
realization of his purposes. An experience not under 
control is even much more likely to defeat his pur- 
poses than to further them. 

Great as is the necessity of evaluating experiences 
from any point of view, it is especially urgent from 
the viewpoint of the educator. He may well give a 
minimum of attention to those types of experience 
that are slender in their educational resourcefulness 
and select those types that, because they are rich 
in possibilities, lend themselves to enrichment and 
the higher forms of co-operative control. Especially 
will he seize upon those multiple situations that are 
capable of evoking multiple responses because, in 
addition to carrying a proportionately large freight- 
age of values, they provide the conditions that are 
necessary for reflective thinking, require that choices 
be made, and call for the exercise of a sustained and 
disciplined. will. 

We are prepared, from what has been said, to un- 
derstand why it is that, given these experiences with 
large possibilities, the factors that lead to the en- 
richment of experience are also the same factors 
that lead to its intelligent and purposive direction. 

The basic factor in the enrichment and control of 
experience is discrimination. As has already been 
suggested, the higher orders of experience arise from 
responses to multiple situations. And yet, no matter 
how varied and rich in stimuli a given situation may 
be, the effectiveness of the response will depend upon 
the mental approach of the person responding. The 
uncritical mind is likely to fall into one of three 
errors. It may see the situation as a confused mass 
without distinguishing among its separate elements, 


100 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


with the result that the response is a generalized 
and confused response, as though the situation were 
simple. Or it may fail to distinguish between the 
relevant and irrelevant elements in the situation, in 
which case the response may be entirely beside the 
mark and futile. Or still further, it may seize upon 
the wrong element, with the result that the response 
gives a totally wrong outcome and leads the person 
astray. Thus, in translating a foreign language it is 
necessary that the learner break up the situation 
into its essential elements. If this is not done, the 
learner merely guesses at the meaning of the con- 
fused sentence. If he fails to distinguish the essen- 
tial forms of verb and noun endings that indicate 
mood and tense and person and case, his translation 
will be inaccurate and misleading. Precisely the 
same discrimination is required for accuracy in de- 
termining practical courses of action or in arriving 
at sound moral judgments. If the situation has been 
mentally fumbled through failure to break it up 
and seize upon the essential factor, the outcome 
in experience will not correspond to reality. The 
critical mind analyzes the situation by breaking it 
up into its constituent elements. It carefully scru- 
tinizes each factor in order to judge whether it is 
relevant or irrelevant and whether the relevant 
factor will lead to a right or a wrong outcome as 
judged by the end to be attained. Having reached 
a clear judgment on this point, the critical mind 
seizes upon the essential factor and proceeds im- 
mediately to seeing the issue through. This is pre- 
cisely the difference between the fuzzy-minded 
thinker and the person with a clear and dependable 
judgment. It is also, more than we have been wont 
to think, a fundamental quality of moral action. 


: 


ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 101 


The moral quality of actions goes back to this be- 
ginning point in conduct. It is not enough that 
one’s intentions be good. It is morally incumbent 
upon normal persons that they think morally by 
thinking clearly and accurately. The foundations 
for all effective action as well as for moral action are 
laid in a mental attitude of critical analysis of situa- 
tions and an accurate discrimination as to the rele- 
vancy of the factors involved. This is also the sound 
and necessary basis for precise scientific thinking, 
for all esthetic judgment and appreciation, for the 
discernment and fulfilment of all social relations, and 
for an effective religious experience. 

Discrimination with reference to the elements of 
situations and discrimination with reference to out- 
comes are inseparably united. What is relevant in 
the situation depends upon the direction of experi- 
ence toward certain outcomes. It is quite as essen- 
tial that the mind run forward from the situation 
to the analysis of the alternatives that it involves as 
that it should analyze the elements in the situation 
itself. In fact, it is the outcome that gives signifi- 
cance to the situation. All the preliminary acts of a 
man who has purposed to take a journey are deter- 
mined by the outcome of his journey, his destina- 
tion. The amount and character of his baggage will 
depend upon the length of his stay and whether or 
not his activities at the end of the journey will 
include business, professional, or social functions. 
The amount of money he will take from his bank 
and whether it will be in the form of currency, trav- 
eller’s checks, or letters of credit will depend upon 
the distance of the journey and whether it will 
carry him beyond the borders of his own country. 
His destination and the time at his disposal will de- 


102 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


termine the selection of the mode of travel, whether 
by rail, steamship, automobile, or airplane. If he 
travels by rail, his destination will determine the 
train he will take and the car he will occupy. Simi- 
larly and no less specifically, the outcomes in char- 
acter will determine the minute criticism and selec- 
tion of a person’s recreational activities. If his 
dominant purpose is in the direction of the construc- 
tive refinement and spiritualization of life, he will 
select those forms of recreation that appeal to the 
more delicate and refined urges of his nature, he will 
select those stimuli that are more light and spiritual 
as distinguished from those that are heavy and gross, 
he will avoid those situations that place him under 
extreme forms of emotion, and he will search out 
those forms of activity that further the main drift 
of his continuous and organized ideals of gentle and 
constructive behavior. In this way the analysis of 
outcomes is an inseparable counterpart of the anal- 
ysis of the situation. The analysis of outcomes in- 
volves both the clear perception of what alternatives 
are possible and a critical evaluation of those out- 
comes in the light of the general drift of one’s pur- 
poses and his organized ideals. 

The second factor in the enrichment and control 
of experience is reflective thinking. Reflective think- 
ing can arise only in a situation that presents a 
problem. The problem arises when there is a break 
in the activity between the stimulus and the re- 
sponse. This break may be caused by delay, by the 
creation of uncertainty that arises when there are 
present two or more alternatives between which 
choice must be made or when there is frustration 
of one form or another. Thinking is evoked by the 
break that is occasioned by the presence of alterna- 





ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 103 


tives. In order to evoke thinking, the situation must 
be new, since choices that have been thought through 
tend to be reduced to habit. 

The steps involved in thinking have been best 
analyzed by Professor Dewey. First, there is aware- 
ness of the problem. The presence of the problem 
does not evoke thinking unless the person is more 
or less keenly aware of the problem. It is the break 
in activity that thrusts the problem up into con- 
sciousness. Free-flowing activity is for the most part 
unconscious, being accompanied at best by a more 
or less vague sense of awareness of what is gomg on. 
But the break in ongoing activity forces the situa- 
' tion up into clear awareness. The second step in 
the thinking process is a clear definition of the 
problem. This step consists largely of what we have 
been discussing under the head of analysis and dis- 
crimination. It involves the taking into account of 
all the factors involved, the clear perception of the 
precise location of the difficulty. The third step 
consists in the suggestion of possible solutions. 
These have to do with the possible outcomes of the 
situation. They arise directly out of the fertility of 
the mind. The fourth step consists in the elabora- 
tion of the suggested solutions. The mind quickly 
runs through each of these in the light of the facts 
it possesses and passes upon the availability of each 
in solving the problem. Some of the possible solu- 
tions that have been suggested are immediately can- 
celled because they hold out little promise of offering 
a way out. The most likely one is selected and elab- 
orated in the mind by a process of running through 
its implications to a successful issue. The final step 
consists in the actual trying out in the situation of the 
most promising suggestion. If the solution has been 


104 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


satisfactory, the problem is at an end and activity 
resumes its uninterrupted flow. If the solution fails, 
the process of suggestion, elaboration, and trial is 
repeated until a solution is found or the situation is 
abandoned as insoluble. For example, a new owner 
of an automobile is driving on the highway in re- 
laxed satisfaction in the sensations of undulating 
motion. Without warning the car is without mo- 
tive power and presently comes to a stop. His ac- 
tivity has suffered interruption. His problem is 
clearly to locate the cause of the trouble and get 
forward on his way. It is manifest that the problem 
lies somewhere in the motive power. A number of 
possible solutions suggest themselves to him. He 
may be out of fuel; it might be that his ignition has 
failed him through an exhausted battery or a faulty 
connection; there might be an obstruction in his 
feed-pipe; there might be a stoppage in the car- 
buretor. In his mind he quickly elaborates each of 
these possible solutions in turn. It could scarcely 
be his fuel supply, since he started with a full load- 
ing; it is not probable that his ignition is at fault, 
since he had the system thoroughly gone over be- 
fore starting; the way out must lie in the carburetor 
or the feed-pipe. Since obstruction in the feed-pipe 
is more likely than a defect in a carburetor that has 
been giving uniformly dependable service, he decides 
that the trouble must be in the feed-pipe. Acting 
upon the suggestion, he finds that this is the diffi- 
culty. Upon clearing the feed-pipe the engine runs 
smoothly, and the autoist is on his way. The situa- 
tion is the more baffling to the inexperienced motor- 
ist because he does not know how to interpret cer- 
tain symptoms and because he is unfamiliar with 
the parts of his machine. The problem is very simple 


ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 105 


for the expert mechanic because he instantly dis- 
criminates between the relevant and the irrelevant 
and seizes upon the essential factor. The working of 
the mind in meeting a situation of the problematical 
sort in a mechanical situation is perfectly apparent; 
but this is precisely the same process through which 
the mind passes in resolving the most intricate and 
difficult problems of intellectual, social, and ethical 
behavior. 

It is clear that thinking enters experience from 
the beginning not only as a factor of enrichment but 
as a factor of control. The mechanisms of reflex and 
instinct are useless in these involved problematical 
situations upon which so many of the richer and 
more meaningful experiences rest. Thinking is for- 
ward-looking because its attention is focused upon 
outcomes. In this way it anticipates the future 
course of experience. It is controlling because it 
deliberately sets about rearranging factors for the 
specific purpose of bringing to pass certain desired 
ends. 

The educator needs to make a clear distinction 
between reflective thinking in this creative sense as 
a factor of control and thinking in the form of ra- 
tionalizing. Rationalizing is backward-looking. It 
is an attempt to account on rational grounds for be- 
havior otherwise determined. The motive for such 
behavior may be the instinctive urges of original 
nature or the inertia of habit or tradition. Ration- 
alizing unconsciously attempts to give a rational 
ground for action or belief. Thus the origin of such 
a doctrine as the divine right of kings is to be sought, 
not in an effort of the mind to arrive at a conclusion 
based upon concrete social facts and a critical judg- 
ment concerning them, but in an attempt on the 


106 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


part of an aristocratic and authoritative social or- 
der to justify by a process which has a show of 
reason an assumption that was basic to such an 
order of society. One of the classical illustrations of 
this tendency of the mind is to be found in the 
scholasticism of the Middle Ages. Scholasticism had 
its origin in the challenge of the theological dogmas 
of the medizval church. Most of these dogmas were 
uncriticised and unverified assumptions. In the face 
of the attack upon them by William of Occam and 
his successors, the schoolmen resorted to deductive 
logic in order to support by a show of reason the 
accepted and traditional dogmas of the church. 
As a matter of fact, the reasoning of the scholastics 
proved nothing. It merely rationalized beliefs al- 
ready accepted as fundamental assumptions of 
medizval life. In like manner, persons in the every- 
day activities of life who on other grounds wish 
very much to pursue certain courses of action or 
satisfy certain desires find reasons for doing so that 
seem to them to justify the act. On this account, in 
the study of the history of human thought, one needs 
to examine carefully into the economic processes, 
the social structure, and the prejudices that lie be- 
neath the surface of life at any given period of its 
development. Very much of what is called philos- 
ophy, and also of what is called theology, is the re- 
sult, not of creative thinking, but of unconscious 
rationalizing. Many of the reasons assigned for 
practical activities are of the same origin. Rational- 
izing is of very little educational value, because it 
follows experience and adds little to its meaning. 
Reflective thinking is of the greatest importance in 
education, because it anticipates experience and gives 
it intelligent direction. 





ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 107 


A third factor in the enrichment and control of 
experience is valuation. All value, in the final anal- 
ysis, rests back upon man’s original nature, as was 
pointed out in Chapter VI. It rests in the capacity 
of certain ends to bring satisfaction. The reason 
why men toil to the limits of their strength at the 
cost of immense effort and sacrifice in building up 
a vast business enterprise is to be sought, not only 
in the gains that will accrue from the business, but, 
perhaps primarily, in the tendencies of man’s orig- 
inal nature to be restlessly active, to construct, to 
acquire. Similarly, man’s interest in art springs 
from the satisfaction that form, proportion, color, 
and tone yield to his native yearning for these quali- 
ties in the objects about him. 

But the higher forms of value, namely rational, 
criticised, organized values, arise out of the same 
general psychological situation that gives rise to 
thinkmg. Rational value arises in the interval of de- 
lay between the stimulus and the response when 
activity is broken. If it were not for this break, de- 
sire would continue to move on the lower level of 
blind, unconscious yearning. The break in activity 
not only raises the object sought into clear con- 
sciousness but renders desire conscious also. Thus, 
as long as the organs of the body are functioning 
smoothly and harmoniously, only in the remotest 
sense 1s one conscious of his health. But if a break- 
down of one of the organs or functions occurs, not 
only is the organ or function involved raised sharply 
into consciousness but health itself moves to the 
centre of consciousness and assumes proportions of 
primary importance. The psalms of lament and 
yearning over Jerusalem were not written by the 
ancient Hebrews in Jerusalem when its affairs ran 


108 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


smoothly in the accustomed channels of social, eco- 
nomic, and religious activity and its streets re- 
sounded with the joyful tides of its life. They were 
written in a strange land, by the rivers of a conquer- 
ing people who had separated them from its familiar 
scenes by exile, broken down its walls, and destroyed 
the splendor of its temple. So also countless experi- 
ences of every-day life attest the fact that the funda- 
mental and commonplace goods without which life 
would be colorless, if not impossible, are little 
thought of, much less valued highly, until one’s re- 
lation to them is rendered uncertain or completely 
severed. 

Once the continuity of activity between the per- 
son and the end sought is broken, the gap tends to 
be filled with delay, uncertainty, or effort, or all of 
them combined. It is when health eludes one through 
a long illness, when its recovery becomes uncertain, 
when one has to submit to a dangerous operation, 
or when it is necessary for one to abandon a life- 
long business or profession in order to seek health 
in another climate, that one comes to value it most. 
It is a notorious fact that an education is not most 
highly appreciated by the sons and daughters of 
wealth and culture, for whom it is at all times within 
easy grasp, but by the sons and daughters of pov- 
erty, for whom education is an uncertain oppor- 
tunity made possible only by prolonged struggle 
and heroic sacrifice. It may be said that the sense 
of value that attaches to any end is in direct pro- 
portion to the delay, uncertainty, or effort that fills 
up the interval of delay between the person and the 
end sought. Only the delay must not be too pro- 
longed, the uncertainty too great, or the effort too 
excessive. In that event the end loses its grip upon 


ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 109 


the person and is abandoned as impossible of attain- 
ment. In that case the invalid abandons himself to 
despair because his malady is hopeless, or he resigns 
himself to a life of suffering because he has not the 
necessary means to employ the professional skill 
necessary to the curing of his disease. Likewise, 
crushing poverty or the care of dependents may 
blight the upreach of the underprivileged after an 
education. Even the mere factor of delay itself may 
cool the ardors of desire. 

Not only is the sense of value created in the situa- 
tions in which delays and alternatives are present, 
but, having been rendered conscious and having been 
brought into relation with competing desires and 
ends, values become subject to criticism. Through 
the process of comparative criticism, values are 
judged according to a scale of values according to 
which some values are given the place of highest 
positive worth while others are given a position at 
the negative end of the scale as being destructive 
of the highest interests of life. Between these posi- 
tive and negative extremes fall all manner of de- 
grees of positive or negative differences. In such a 
simple process as purchasing a watch this criticism 
of competing values is brought into play. A rather 
rough timepiece can be bought at a minimal cost. 
By the use of such a crude timepiece one’s engage- 
ments can be met and a general working schedule 
followed satisfactorily. But if a more reliable time- 
piece is desired one must buy a jeweled watch at a 
considerably increased cost. And if one seeks ex- 
treme accuracy, such as is necessary in following 
railroad schedules or keeping precise scientific rec- 
ords, he must be prepared to pay a very much 
greater price for a finely constructed and delicately 


110 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


adjusted mechanism. If to accuracy of time one 
desires to add elegance, he must expect to pay the 
price of beautifully wrought precious metals. But 
somewhere on this ascending scale of values this 
particular scale of values comes into competition 
with other scales of desires and values. One must 
have a house to live in, food to eat, and clothing to 
wear. The interests of health, culture, and benev- 
olence must also be taken into account. On a lim- 
ited income one must balance accuracy and elegance 
in a timepiece with the other needs of life. He must, 
consequently, be content with reasonable accuracy 
and elegance in his timepiece in order that he may 
live in a respectable house, have sufficient and nour- 
ishing food to eat, and durable and pleasing clothing 
to wear, besides leaving room for the cultural and 
spiritual requirements of life. To exceed that point 
of balance would be to exercise bad judgment and 
taste and to sacrifice other .and perhaps higher 
values. A violation of the adjustment of all the 
values of life in the interest of any one value quickly 
becomes a moral problem. Precisely the same prin- 
ciple is involved in the balancing of spiritual desires. 
The problem of the moral and spiritual life is not 
so much the affirmation of some desires or the repu- 
diation of others as it is a matter of redirecting all 
desires by bringing them into relation with each 
other. The result of this process of criticism, when 
it is carried forward to its normal consummation, is 
the organization of a set of values through the subor- 
dination of certain values to certain other values 
and through the emergence of a dominant purpose 
in life. Once this set of organized desires is created, 
every new desire is brought into relation to it and 
evaluated accordingly. If it is negative, it is set 





ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 111 


aside as hindering the main drift of experience or as 
frustrating its purposes. If it is in keeping with the 
dominant desires, it is approved and built into the 
structure of values. The outcome of this process of 
the evaluation of desire is what Professor Coe has 
happily designated as “the desire to have desires”’ 
of an approved sort. That is, man’s attitude toward 
his desires becomes controlling and creative. 
Without doubt the control and creation of desire 
is the highest achievement of which human nature 
is capable. Taking into account the fact that man’s 
experience is on the whole active, dynamic, and out- 
reaching toward worthful ends, the motivation of 
experience is to be located in desire. Whatever man 
does in the field of controlling and creating his desires 
affects his total experience, and therefore modifies 
his total personality more fundamentally than any 
other effort of which he is capable. Here, if any- 
where, lies the possibility of the remaking of human 
nature. Here is the locus of that rebirth from above 
without which one cannot enter the Kingdom of God. 
This factor in the enrichment and control of ex- 
perience is of particular interest to the religious 
educator. It is in the world of values that religion 
centres. Each specialized activity, such as the in- 
tellectual, the ethical, the sesthetic, and the social, 
has its own set of values, and experience in each 
field of activity is measurable, in large part, by the 
degree in which it is conscious of these values and 
brings itself into conformity to them. But religion 
does not deal with specialized values. The trend of 
thinking in the psychology of religion is to discover 
religion in the fusion and idealization of all values 
whatsoever in what may be termed a total funda- 
mental meaning and worth of life at the religious 


112 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


level. It would furthermore appear that at the point 
where experience rises to the level of evaluation, re- 
ligion has a fundamental function to render in the 
control of experience. If, on the one hand, all the 
departmentalized groups of values feed meaning 
and worth into religious experience, religion, on the 
other hand, feeds back into all of these specialized 
groups of values a something that no one of them 
can possibly possess—the bringing to bear upon 
a particular experience of the total meaning and 
worth of life. Thus, to select but one illustration, 
the patterns of religious concepts and practices are 
profoundly modified by the economic interest, ac- 
tivities, and processes of society. Religion draws into 
itself the richness and fullness of these economic 
values. But when, in turn, religion feeds its influ- 
ence back into the economic relations and functions 
it feeds back not only the economic values but the 
social, the ethical, the zsthetic, and the intellectual 
values; and, over and above all these in and of 
themselves, religion supplies that something that is 
not to be found in any one of them, or in all of them 
acting separately—that total meaning and worth of 
life that gives significance and sanction to each of 
these fields of experience and relates them in some 
manner to the destiny of the whole. From the view- 
point of departmentalized and isolated economic 
values, it may seem to the advantage of a manufac- 
turer to increase his dividends by paying the lowest 
wage that will secure labor in a highly competitive 
market, by economizing on the cost of operation by 
carrying on his work in a poorly lighted and un- 
sanitary building, by leaving dangerous machinery 
exposed, by speeding up the process by forcing men 
to work through a long-hour day, or by substituting 


ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 113 


the Jabor of women and children for that of men. 
And this is precisely what does happen in an indus- 
try conducted on an unsocial and unchristian basis. 
But when the same manufacturer brings his process 
under the influence of Christian ideals, a profound 
change is brought about in his point of view and 
motive. His relation to his factory is lifted out of 
its isolation and brought into relation with all his 
other values. It is socialized by his seeing in his 
employees human beings with wants and aspirations 
like his own, who cannot be subordinated to goods 
and profits, and by giving to his industry a new 
meaning as a means of serving the wants of society. 
It is made ethical by the clear perception of the 
rights of others and by a compelling sense of justice, 
even, perhaps, to the point of giving the workman 
a part in the management of the industry as a part 
of his right of self-determination. It is softened by 
his sense of the esthetic so that the plant, set in 
beautiful surroundings, is made architecturally satis- 
fying, and opportunities for improvement, cultural 
enjoyment, and recreation are provided. Over and 
above these influences of particular sets of values, 
the whole process is lifted into a new, broad, and 
spiritual setting that cannot be accounted for in 
terms of any one of them. The Christian industrial- 
ist feels himself responsible to his fellows in indus- 
try because he, with them, is responsible to God as 
the ground and centre of the whole of existence. 
This is why religion, having derived a part of its 
meaning from economic functions, cannot re-enter 
economic functions with only the same set of values. 
The relations and functions of the economic life are 
henceforth brought under the searching scrutiny of 
social attitudes which subordinate things to persons, 


114 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


and of ethical attitudes that will not suffer injustice 
in the interest of either efficiency or dividends. And 
besides all this, there is the reference of all values and 
purposes to that fundamental wholeness of things, 
that ground of all being, which the Christian mind 
represents to itself in terms of a personal God who 
is Himself a Creator of values and a bringer of pur- 
poses to pass on a cosmic scale. No immediate nor 
particular nor departmental value can be lifted up 
into relation with the values and purposes that cen- 
tre in God without undergoing profound modification. 

Of this social function of religion, religious educa- 
tion, it must be confessed, has thought all too little. 
With the deeper insights into the nature of religion 
that are coming with modern psychology and so- 
ciology, there is emerging a conviction on the part 
of many careful thinkers that modern society re- 
quires for its soundness, its integration, and its mo- 
tivation that which only religion can give. These 
demands of the modern world lay upon religious 
education an urgent responsibility which it must 
recognize and accept to the full. The rational and 
psychological basis fer its approach to the problem 
of control in individual and social conduct will lie 
somewhere in the field of valuation in its relation 
to experience. 

A fourth factor in the enrichment and control of 
experience 1s knowledge. The beginning of control 
of any sort in any field of experience is understand- 
ing. One is helpless in the presence of disease until 
he understands its cause. The isolation of the cause 
is the first step in cure or prevention. It is for that 
reason that the medical profession is helpless as yet 
in the presence of such diseases as cancer, whose 
ravages are constantly on the increase. The elimi- 


ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 115 


nation of yellow fever is one of the most fascinating 
achievements of modern science. Its history is re- 
corded in the patient search for the cause and rapid 
progress in the control of the disease thereafter. 
Society is helpless in the presence of such a natural 
force as electricity until it comes to know its nature 
and the ways in which it behaves; after that, elec- 
tricity becomes one of its most obedient and useful 
servants. So also in the case of the great social 
problems such as poverty, crime, and insanity. 
The function of knowledge is to give understand- 
ing of experience by helping one to interpret it and 
know the factors that enter into it as well as to pre- 
dict its outcomes. Without knowledge one works 
blindly and helplessly. This is well illustrated in the 
futile efforts of primitive man to control his expe- 
rience. He knows next to nothing of the forces of 
the material world about him or of the manner in 
which they operate. He is forced, on that account, 
to rely upon coincidences and analogies that more 
often lead him astray than help him. He becomes a 
prey of superstitions. At most his procedure in 
dealing with his world rests upon vague and uncer- 
tain guesses. On the other hand, the progress of 
modern man lies in his knowledge of the world about 
him. Just in proportion to the precision of his knowl- 
edge has his control become certain and uniform and 
confident. It is so in the experience of each indi- 
vidual. Unenlightened experience is blind, uncer- 
tain, ineffective. It eventuates in nothing significant. 
It does not get far from the point at which it started. 
Experiences differ greatly in their ability to ab- 
sorb knowledge. The simpler forms of experience 
pass immediately from situation to response with- 
out the intervening steps of interpretation and con- 


116 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


scious direction, as in the case of food activities or 
going to and from one’s place of business. Problem- 
atical situations, on the other hand, that demand 
thinking are absolutely dependent upon a wide 
range of dependable knowledge for their solution, 
as in choosing a life vocation or in deciding how to 
vote on an international issue. Knowledge is the 
material the mind works with in thinking. If the 
mind is lacking in abundant and reliable knowledge, 
the analysis of the situation into its essential ele- 
ments is impossible, suggestions as to alternatives 
do not arise out of its impoverished backgrounds, 
and outcomes cannot be effectively projected in the 
imagination. The more knowledge an experience is 
capable of carrying, the greater the contribution it 
is capable of making to the whole of experience and 
the more certain and easy is its control. 

The last factor in the enrichment and control of 
experience is a disciplined will. The presence of al- 
ternatives in outcomes shifts the responsibility for 
the determination of conduct from the mechanism of 
the situation and the automatic bond to the intelli- 
gent purpose of the responding person. The delayed 
response that is occasioned by the presence of com- 
peting outcomes and that furnishes the matrix from 
which thinking and values emerge is the same situa- 
tion that forces deliberate choice and is capable of 
giving rise to an organized purpose. 

Choice, in any case, involves the presence of stan- 
dards of value. In the higher forms of conduct these 
are represented by organized ideals that express not 
only the best impulses and judgments of the indi- 
vidual but the best judgment of the race. Ideals 
are the expression of one’s standards of value as 
applied to the various aspects of conduct. To affirm 


ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 117 


that a person has ideals is to say that he is in the 
habit of applying certain standards of conduct which 
he has taken over from others, or has worked out 
for himself, to his responses to the situations that 
life presents to him. Thus in deciding such a matter 
of personal conduct as to whether or not one shall 
engage in war there are involved not less than three 
factors. One finds himself caught up in a temporary 
movement of the social mind such as is involved in 
time of war that brings to bear upon him a tre- 
mendous social pressure. Everywhere about him his 
fellows are taking up arms, a propagandist press is 
inflaming the popular mind with stories of atrocities, 
and it is made to appear to him from sources that he 
respects that if he fails to throw himself whole- 
heartedly into war activities he is not patriotic. 
On the other hand, he finds himself consulting his 
own personal ideals as these have grown up into 
something like an organized and consistent view of 
one’s relations to his fellows and to the social order 
as based upon good will and co-operation and a 
conviction of the sacredness of human life. These 
lead him personally to revolt against the wholesale 
slaughter of his fellowmen. He furthermore finds 
himself holding up his problem in the light of the 
best that men have thought and felt in the long and 
ascending experience of the race with reference to 
the brotherly relations of men to each other. What- 
ever his decision may be, if he is acting intelligently 
and morally, he is criticising and comparing these 
three standards of value and bringing his final de- 
cision as to what his attitude shall be into conform- 
ity with a standard of conduct that he has made his 
own. In any case, it is this reaction of personal 
criticism upon the current temper of mind and upon 


118 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


the traditional standards of conduct that yields the 
finer forms of personal morality. 

In the higher orders of experience, both paividnel 
and collective, the realization of purposes is fre- 
quently long delayed. The person or group must 
have the capacity to visualize the distant goal and 
hold it vividly before the imagination as a motivator 
to effective action. Life presents rigorous aspects 
to those who would attain its supreme goods. Ob- 
stacles, not infrequently of the most difficult and 
stubborn sort, have to be overcome. Against these 
baffling delays and obstacles the will must sustain 
itself. The graphs of elimination from the public 
school, for example, reveal with impressive eloquence 
the competition of many interests with the securing 
of an education on the part of the vast majority of 
American youth. Given a certain degree of mental 
ability, the completion of a programme of education, 
even through the high school; can only be accom- 
plished by steadfastly adherig to this purpose in 
the face of the temptation to drop out of school to 
earn money, to be swayed by the example of others, 
to yield to the highly commendable desire to con- 
tribute to the work of the world, or to give way to 
the boredom that inevitably follows the continued 
pursuit of a purpose through a long period of time 
and effort after the impetus that arises from nov- 
elty has disappeared. Even more exacting is the 
attainment of certain qualities of character that can 
only be brought about through the redirection of 
certain native tendencies that are stubbornly per- 
sistent or through the patient building up of per- 
manent attitudes that do not spring directly from 
the impulses of original nature. Such personal quali- 
ties as self-restraint, geniality, a quality of judg- 


ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 119 


ment in practical matters that is based upon fact 
and self-criticism are achievements that result from 
long-continued and purposeful effort. Personal char- 
acter in the highest sense is not the result of blind 
impulse; it is the creative product of sustained pur- 
pose and will. 

Education through experience demands a disci- 
pline of the most rigorous character. In fact, by the 
side of the older type of artificial “discipline” that 
rested upon the psychology of formal discipline, the 
self-discipline of education through experience is in- 
comparably more exacting. It is as exacting as the 
frustrations, delays, and distractions of life itself. 
But on the higher plateaus of experience, they who 
attain to the realm of the spiritual, which may be 
defined as experience interpreted in terms of the 
highest values of life, must endure as seeing Him 
who is invisible. It is out of the stuff of resolution 
and sustained effort in the face of the immediate, 
the irrelevant, and the diverting that all great per- 
sonalities have been made. Firmness and toughness 
of fibre can be given to character in no other way. 
This is not the discipline that is imposed from with- 
out; it is the discipline that comes from the welter 
of the daily task and the undaunted courage and 
unflagging effort of the years. Experience in driving 
a purpose through to its proper outcome in spite of all 
distractions and interruptions and in holding one’s 
self steadily to his unfinished undertaking—this is 
the best possible preparation for the demands that 
life will make upon the patience and the will. 


Virl 
THE ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 


Since the curriculum in any case is concerned to 
such a large degree with knowledge, one of the most 
fundamental problems connected with the curric- 
ulum centres in the origin and function of knowledge. 
From what source and under what conditions does 
knowledge arise? By what method is knowledge 
validated? What place does knowledge have in the 
furthering of experience? What shall be the criteria 
for judging what knowledge is of most worth? These 
are inquiries that immediately confront the student 
of the curriculum as enriched and controlled expe- 
rience. Not only do these considerations profoundly 
affect the content and organization of the curriculum, 
but they uncover the intrinsic connections between 
subject-matter, method, and organization. Before 
inquiring, therefore, into what constitutes the cur- 
riculum, we must pause to inquire into the origin 
and function of knowledge. 

The significant movement of modern thinking on 
this problem, as was pointed out in Chapter IV, is 
toward the view that knowledge arises out of ex- 
perience as meaning. This is increasingly seen to be 
true when knowledge is viewed in its larger social 
and historical setting as an affair of the race; it is 
equally true when viewed in the more limited setting 
of individual experience. The cumulative insights, 
understandings, scientific formulas, and recorded 
achievements of the race that together constitute 

120 


ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 121 


the substance of civilization are those organized 
bodies of meaning that hover over the tortuous 
stream of historical experience. They are the more 
or less permanent records of what man has thought 
and felt about himself and his world as his thought 
and feeling have grown out of the process of his 
adjustment to his world. Similarly, knowledge for 
the individual is that more or less stable body of 
meaning that emerges from the milieu of experiences 
and that continues on after the experiences have 
passed. In either case, the roots of knowledge lie 
embedded deep in the fertile soil of experience. 

Meaning, as we have already had occasion to note 
in connection with the concept of enrichment and as 
we shall have occasion to consider in greater detail 
under the principle of continuity, consists, funda- 
mentally, in the perception of the interrelatedness 
of experience, especially in the form of antecedent 
and consequent. Thus the meaning of an experience, 
looking backward, is to be found in its relation as 
consequence to some prior experience. The present 
experience is what it is because a former experience 
was what it was. Similarly, when the forward look 
is taken, the meaning of the present experience is 
to be found in the effect which it will have upon 
the future course of experience. 

Because knowledge derives as meaning from ex- 
perience, and experience arises out of the adjust- 
ment process by which persons relate themselves to 
their world, knowledge is from the beginning essen- 
tially active. The fundamental character of the ad- 
justment process, as we have seen, is an outreach- 
ing after valued ends in an effort to use and control 
one’s environment... It follows that meaning, on the 
whole, has its origin in the use of objects, forces, 


122 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


and persons. The identification as well as the nam- 
ing of objects originates in use. When the child 
learns and uses the names of the objeets about it, 
including, for example, its mother, it is that it may 
use these objects in satisfying its desires. “‘Mamma”’ 
means “‘I want my mother to take me up or fondle 
me or come to my assistance.” “Bottle” means 
“T am hungry and want my food.” “Bed” means 
“I am tired and want to be tucked in my bed.” 
In the same manner, on a racial scale, the naming of 
things by primitive man was in order that he might 
identify them to himself and to his fellows and 
bring them into his service. While patterns of this 
process of meaning are simple in the case of the 
little child who is taking his first lessons in the ad- 
venture of life, or of the race that is facing a strange 
world for the first time, they are precisely the same 
for both individuals and the race in the case of all 
new experiences. 

This origin of knowledge on why it is im- 
possible for any one to “tell”? another anything un- 
less there has been some common experience upon 
which meaning may rest. This is impressively ap- 
parent when one runs upon a totally unfamiliar word 
in conversation or on the printed page. It awakens 
absolutely no response. The unlettered says “‘’ That 
is Greek to me,” meaning that it belongs to another 
world and another race. And it will continue to be- 
long to another world until some basis of shared 
experience is discovered, even in a roundabout way. 
This search for a shared experience is precisely what 
the dictionary accomplishes for us. ‘“‘Gamboge” 
may awaken no meaning for the learner. In that 
case the learner brings to his aid the dictionary, which 
proceeds by defining the word in terms of expe- 


ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 123 


riences with which he is familiar. “‘Gamboge,”’ the 
dictionary tells him, “‘is a resinous substance of a 
canary yellow color, used for dyeing or medicinal 
purposes.” If the learner has had experience with 
resin and canary yellow and dyeing and medicine 
he has discovered the meaning of “‘gamboge’’; if 
he has not, he will search for the meaning of “‘resin”’ 
and “canary yellow” and “dyeing” and ‘“‘medicine” 
until the meaningless abstract symbol has been 
thrown down into concrete forms of his own ex- 
perience. 

This fundamental quality of knowledge is of the 
utmost importance to educators. One of the most 
misleading assumptions of education has been that 
it is possible to “tell” the learner what he does not 
know, being assured that if the learner can repeat 
back the formula, that is evidence that he has 
“learned”’ it. No greater illusion could exist. Only 
in the degree that there is an overlapping of expe- 
rience on the part of the teacher and the learner can 
there be communication. 

It may be said, therefore, that all learning, at 
least in its initial aspects, is for the most part by the 
trial-and-error method. This is manifestly true of 
the learning of primitive men and of the child. It 
is the knowledge that secures results that is selected; 
that which fails to secure results is abandoned as 
worthless. If “bottle”? does not get the hungry 
child food but reproving looks and gestures instead, 
it is omitted from his growing vocabulary and another 
substituted that does get results. The magical 
formulas of the savage maintain their standing in 
his thinking because they seem to secure results. If 
they prove unsuccessful they are abandoned and 
more effective ones are sought. It is precisely the 


124 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


same in ordinary experience. “‘Experience,”’ we say, 
‘“‘is the best teacher,’ because we feel more certain 
of the things that we have learned by the trial-and- 
error method. 

It is in science, however, that we have the utmost 
refinement of the trial-and-error method of learning. 
In that case the process is brought under conscious 
and rigid control. Conditions are arranged as far 
as possible so that all irrelevant factors are excluded. 
Single factors are introduced into the process or 
withdrawn, and a precise record made of the results. 
This process is carried on to almost endless lengths 
until a formula that works is discovered or the en- 
terprise is abandoned as hopeless. The course of 
scientific discovery is literally marked by the wreck- 
age of discarded hypotheses. The result of the suc- 
cessful trials is a generalization or a formula. In 
every case the generalization or formula is a brief 
symbolic description of causal relations. Thus a 
formula for making explosives, let us say TNT, is 
an accurate and dependable statement of the rela- 
tions into which certain chemical elements may be 
brought in order to produce a high explosive of cer- 
tain qualities. A formula in the field of biology, 
let us say the Mendelian law, is a record of the 
observation of the relation of certain factors of 
heredity to certain results in the transmission of 
characteristics. 

Knowledge may be said, therefore, to be not only 
active in its basic character, but experimental. It 
represents that restless attitude of man toward his 
world that seeks for understanding, and for an un- 
derstanding that has been tested out in experience 
and that will not fail him in the exigencies that life 
presents. 


ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 125 


But, if knowledge arises out of experience as 
meaning, it re-enters experience as an instrument of 
control. In the search for the factors in the control 
of experience in Chapter VII, it was found that the 
first step in the control of experience itself was an 
understanding of the nature of experience. The same 
thing is true in the control of one’s world. The first 
step is an accurate and clear understanding of the 
factors involved and their causal relations. But the 
active and experimental nature of knowledge does 
not let it rest with mere understanding. It quickly 
passes into the realm of conscious, purposive con- 
trol. The discussion of knowledge as meaning car- 
ried us to the beginnings of control. To be sure, the 
control attitude is, in the earlier forms of knowledge, 
unconscious. But in its higher forms it becomes 
definitely conscious and purposive. Every symbol in 
the form of words is in some measure an instrument 
of control, from the baby calling for his bottle to the 
command of the military strategist. But it is in the 
field of science that the attempt at control becomes 
more clearly purposive. Back of every scientific 
formula is the assumption that it can produce 
changes in the world that now exists. The objec- 
tive of the medical prescription is not simply the 
understanding of the causes of disease but the cure 
and prevention of disease. The formula for TNT 
is evolved in order that the characteristic qualities of 
that explosive may be utilized in the furthering of 
human desires. Out of the understanding of the 
Mendelian laws of inheritance emerges the eugenic 
proposal for the continuous improvement of the 
human stock. The science of “‘pure”’ sociology, which 
studies society for its structure and processes, passes 
over into “‘applied” sociology in its effort to organ- 


126 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


ize society in the interest of a richer and more 
effective human life. Psychology, which starts with 
an inquiry into the nature and function of mind, 
ends by a conscious and intelligent effort at the 
creation of superior personalities and the direction 
of human experience. The scientific study of re- 
ligion issues in an attempt to organize religious ex- 
perience according to the ideals and purposes of the 
prophets and of Jesus and for the furthering of the 
enterprises of the Kingdom of God. That is, for- 
mulas are sought for the specific purpose of controlling 
our world, including ourselves, which, when achieved, 
marks the highest attainment of man. 

It is out of this belief of modern man in the pos- 
sibility of intelligent control that there has emerged 
in modern times the concept of progress. Increas- 
ingly the attention of the race is fixed upon the 
future. With increasing extensions of the areas of 
his control man has come to believe that it is pos- 
sible to secure a continuous improvement in the 
racial stock, better conditions of social living, an 
increase of human understanding and sympathy, and 
a more spiritual and ethical life. The sum of these 
achievements he calls progress, and progress is the 
dominant passion of the modern mind. 

Knowledge serves as a factor of control by placing 
at the disposal of each individual and of each gen- 
eration the experience of the race. The experience 
of any single person, or even of any single genera- 
tion, is too limited to afford the needed control. 
Through knowledge he may bring to bear upon his 
personal problems the experience which men under 
widely varying conditions of life have had in dealing 
with the same or similar problems. This enables the 
person not only to understand his own experience 


ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 127 


but to bring to its control the experiments that others 
have made in dealing with such experiences. 

This is why it is not necessary for each genera- 
tion and each individual to return always to the be- 
ginning and learn over again the lessons that ex- 
perience teaches. Knowledge enables the learner to 
capitalize the experience of the past and to begin 
where others have left off. In this way knowledge 
is cumulative and its outreach is ever into new 
areas of experience. In this way experience main- 
tains a kind of frontier that is progressively en- 
croaching upon the hinterlands of unexplored real- 
ity. It is in this way that every science has been 
built up from the first discovered law to an elaborate 
system of control. It is in this way also that the 
way has been prepared for each invention, which, 
like the engine, has moved away from the first crude 
use of steam to the monsters of railway and ocean 
power plants and to the supple and swift portable 
gas-engine. The reason certain inventions could not 
be achieved sooner lies in this simple fact that the 
groundwork of previous knowledge and experience 
had not been laid for them. 

Clearly, the lead of these considerations is in the 
direction of a functional view of knowledge. In the 
interest of the greater well-being of the human race, 
the hand, as we have seen, has been developed as 
an organ of manipulation and construction. Simi- 
larly, the eye has been developed as an organ of 
wider and more accurate adjustment through vision, 
as the ear has been developed as an organ of adjust- 
ment through sound. So intelligence has been de- 
veloped as an organ of more effective adjustment 
to a complex and changing and meaningful world. 
Knowledge, in turn, which is a product of intelli- 


128 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


gence in its reflection upon experience, assumes a 
functional réle in experience in that it makes it 
possible through intelligence to understand experi- 
ence, to forecast probable outcomes, and to rearrange 
the factors so as to reconstruct outcomes. Without 
knowledge intelligence would be helpless and ex- 
perience would hurtle on through situations and re- 
sponses, the blind, fortuitous result of a blind and 
irresponsible mechanism. 

If, on the one hand, knowledge arises out of ex- 
perience as meaning and re-enters it as a factor of 
control, it is also validated in experience. Under the 
more dynamic view of experience as the result of 
the adjustment process, we are increasingly coming 
to think of truth, not so much in terms of fixed 
formulations that remain intact from one genera- 
tion to another, as of convictions and tentative 
working conclusions. As working instruments they 
are held tentatively because they are constantly 
subject to verification by fresh experience. As in- 
struments of control they are convincing and satis- 
factory as long as they seem to correspond to expe- 
rience and get results. Once they fail to give a 
rational explanation of experience, or prove ineffec- 
tive in affecting the course of experience, we re- 
examine them and revise them to suit the new facts, 
or, if they are hopelessly unresponsive to the de- 
mands of experience, discard them altogether. All 
knowledge begins as a hypothesis—by venturing 
certain guesses in the light of suggestive and signifi- 
cant experience. These hypotheses are used as as- 
sumptions in conduct. If the action turns out to be 
successful the conviction concerning the truth of the 
assumption is confirmed and it is repeatedly used as 
long as it works. If, however, the assumption does 


. 


ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 129 


not work satisfactorily, it is either modified or dis- 
carded. Notwithstanding the survival power of be- 
liefs and opinions, no belief can stand in the face 
of repeated breakdowns in the control of experience. 
Thus, as was suggested in recording this tendency 
in modern thought in Chapter IV, the assumption 
that the world is flat simply did not “work” in our 
practical dealings with the facts of life, and especially 
in carrying on its activities. It was inevitable, there- 
fore, that in time the assumption should decay. 
Scientific, philosophical, and religious thought has 
threaded its onward way through the wreckage of 
discarded concepts and dogmas that, in spite of all 
our theories of knowledge, have had to be abandoned 
as useless luggage simply because they have not fit- 
ted in with the exigencies of an expanding experi- 
ence. All such ideas are beset with a nemesis of de- 
cay that, in spite of our darling prejudices, finally 
breaks them down and destroys them. 

To be sure, the element of time is a matter of 
great consideration in the validation of truth. So 
also is the range of experience. A meagre span of 
experience, to say nothing of single and isolated ex- 
periences, furnishes too slender a basis for a sound 
judgment upon the validity of a conclusion. Re- 
ality is vastly more intricate and complicated than 
that. It is like a vast continent which requires the 
united efforts of many generations to survey, map, 
subdue, and develop. Even individual experience, 
however varied, is inadequate to exhaust it. The 
social experience of many races and cultures through 
long periods of time is alone adequate to furnish a 
reliable witness to reality. And even so, our con- 
ceptions of reality must ever wait upon fresh ap- 
proaches of experience, new insights, and the re- 


130 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


examination of our dearest convictions in the light 
of new needs as life advances. It is this wider base 
of changing individual and social experience that 
furnishes the medium through which fundamental 
reality discloses itself. 

Here also is to be found the criterion for judging 
what knowledge is of most worth. This problem 
has arisen afresh with each changing conception of 
the curriculum. If the curriculum is thought of in 
terms of discipline, then that knowledge is of most 
worth that is most formal and difficult of mastery. 
If the curriculum is thought of in terms of knowl- 
edge, then that knowledge is of most worth that 
furnishes instruction with the widest range of use- 
ful information. If the curriculum is thought of in 
terms of recapitulation, then that knowledge is of 
most worth that arises out of the culture epochs of 
the race and is capable of stimulating the emerging | 
interests and capacities of the developing person. 
But if the curriculum is thought of in terms of an 
enriched and controlled experience, then the knowl- 
edge that is of most worth is that which furthers 
present experience by throwing light upon it and 
enabling the learner to direct it toward consciously 
selected ends. 

This introduces a highly selective factor into the 
evaluation of knowledge. To be of worth, it must 
have a more or less direct bearing upon present on- 
going experience. And because experience is con- 
stantly undergoing change, this means that knowl- 
edge that is useful to one generation may not be 
useful to another, because the needs of each are 
utterly different. Furthermore, the highly individual 
character of experience may render knowledge that 
is of great worth to one individual completely use- 


ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 131 


less to another whose experience lies in quite another 
direction. The same thing is true of different social 
groups with their social, economic, and intellectual 
backgrounds. Knowledge that is suitable to one 
may not at all be suitable to another differently 
situated with reference to racial, cultural, or national 
backgrounds. This relevancy of knowledge to pres- 
ent experience may be considered the first criterion 
of the worth of knowledge. 

The second criterion of the worth of knowledge 
consists in the relevancy of knowledge to the ex- 
pected future experience of individuals and groups. 
The permanent value of certain types of knowledge 
cannot be judged by the needs of the passing mo- 
ment. Experience is constantly moving forward into 
fresh experiences. The educator must take his posi- 
tion midway in the developing process and have in 
mind those needs toward which experience is mov- 
ing as well as those that are current in the more 
limited experience of the learner. From this point 
of view, that knowledge is of most worth that con- 
ducts the learner in the direction of his likely future 
experience. This is not intended to suggest that it 
is possible definitely to predict that future, for such 
is not the case. But it is possible to discern direc- 
tions and probabilities. In fact, this is one of the 
functions of education, to give direction to the expe- 
rience of the learner. That knowledge is of most 
worth from this point of view that contributes cu- 
mulatively to the forward movement of experience 
toward chosen objectives. 

It is even possible that there are some future needs 
that the immature learner cannot foresee and the 
value of which makes no present appeal to him. 
These also must be taken into account in judging 


1382 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


the worth of certain types of knowledge. There are 
certain types of skills, for example, such as the learn- 
ing of the multiplication table and the mastery of 
movements involved in playing the violin or the 
piano, that are absolutely necessary to the carrying 
on of the simplest business calculations in mature 
life or the mastery of the technic of an art, the value 
of which in the present moment it is very difficult to 
help the learner to appreciate. On the basis of the 
limited experience of the child it is even more difficult 
to enable him to appreciate fundamental ideals and 
choices in the realm of moral conduct for the reason 
that it is impossible for him to foresee the remote 
outcomes of these ideals and choices. In situations 
such as these there must be mutual co-operation be- 
tween the learner and the educator in selecting cer- 
tain bodies of knowledge the worth of which the 
immature learner with his limited foresight cannot 
fully appreciate, but which the educator with his 
long Jook ahead does appreciate fully. 

Is knowledge, then, of value for its own sake? It 
is clear from the foregoing considerations that the 
primary value of knowledge consists in the fact that, 
having emerged from experience, it 1s capable of 
re-entering experience as a factor of control. Its 
fundamental worth consists in the fact that it is a 
means toward an end. As in the case of most, if not 
all, means, however, that which in its origin was a 
means toward an end comes, in time, to be an end 
in itself and to be valued for its own sake rather 
than for the end toward which it leads. It is so 
with knowledge. Once the meanings of experience 
have been brought together and organized into a 
stable body of knowledge, knowledge itself comes to 
be sought for its own sake. This is particularly true 


ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 183 


in the field of “pure” science. Much of the incentive 
for scientific discovery is the restless desire to add 
to the growing sum of human knowledge some in- 
crement of truth without any thought of its bear- 
ing upon the practical conduct of life. In the same 
way the artist creates in the realm of painting, sculp- 
ture, architecture, or music for the sheer joy of the 
product without any thought as to how the enjoy- 
ment of color or form or tone will further the well- 
being of life. In no area of human experience does 
this process operate more effectively or apparently 
than im religious experience where a ceremony, let 
us say, which had its origin in the service it was 
felt to render in securing certain ends loses in part, 
or in whole, its original significance and is punctili- 
ously observed for its own sake. And yet, after all 
this has been said, the crowning glory of knowledge 
lies in the fact that it has work to do, a function to 
perform, a high end to serve in the liberation, the 
enrichment, and the self-direction of the human 
spirit. 


1X 
THE PRINCIPLE OF REALITY 


Tue religious educator is not called upon to deal 
with any problem that is more fundamental or diffi- 
cult than the making of religious ideas, emotions, 
attitudes, and motives vital in the lives of persons. 
This is due in part to the tendency which educa- 
tion has shown to become a formal and meaning- 
less process. It is due in part to the tendency of all 
spiritual movements to become traditional and in- 
stitutional. It is also due in part to the tendency of 
religion to draw apart from the rest of life and be- 
come departmentalized with its own set of ideas, 
emotions, and values. This is a problem which all 
educators face; m the very nature of morals and re- 
ligion, giving vitality to ideas presents a special 
problem of unusual difficulty to the religious edu- 
eator. If religious education is to be effective, it 
must be kept vital and close to life. 

The vitality of religious ideas, emotions, and atti- 
tudes rests primarily upon a vivid and compelling 
sense of their reality. They must have the feel of 
substantiality, of resistance, of permanence. In fact, 
since the religious attitude has to do with the funda- 
mental meaning and worth of life, there must be a 
feeling of certainty beyond that which attaches to 
the temporary and incidental concerns of life. 
Lacking these elements, religion lacks something 
that goes into its making as religion and the ground 
is cut from beneath its effective functioning as a 

134 


THE PRINCIPLE OF REALITY 135 


spiritualizing and motivating power in human expe- 
rience. 

Second only to a vivid sense of the reality of these 
religious elements in experience is a vivid sense of 
their worth. They must seem to rank in importance 
above the most fundamental concerns of the eco- 
nomic, social, and intellectual life. Here again, aris- 
ing out of the fact of the very nature of religion, 
concerned as it is with the total worth and destiny 
of things, religion must seem to be the most im- 
portant of all the matters with which man is con- 
cerned. As religion, it is that or nothing at all. 

When one thinks of religious education as a pro- 
cedure, it is clear that, whatever else happens, it 
must not be allowed to become an isolated, formal 
process. It must be kept real and vital and im- 
mersed in the processes of actual life. 

Since, then, the religious educator must work for 
the sense of reality and worth in all matters that 
pertain to religion, he must seek for the grounds 
upon which the sense of reality and worth rest. 

The primary ground of the sense of reality and 
worth in religious ideas, emotions, and attitudes is to 
be found in immediacy of experience. It is a signifi- 
cant fact that the great periods of original and 
dynamic power in religion have been those periods 
in which there has been fresh access to experience. In 
contrast with such creative periods have been those 
times of spiritual poverty and weakness when the 
contacts with reality have been clogged by tradition, 
dogma, institution, ceremonial. Ideas, ideals, and 
convictions that emerge from such creative periods 
never derive their convincing power from arguments. 
They move at a level far above the reach of argu- 
ment. They carry in their own bosoms their own 


136 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


validation. This is why great creative religious 
leaders like Paul and Luther have seldom depended 
primarily upon argument for the support of their 
views. They for the most part merely announce 
their insights into reality in the form of compelling 
convictions that, because of their immediate relation 
to experience, seem to be self-evident. This was 
pre-eminently true of the Founder of Christianity. 
All prophets are essentially reporters; when they 
argue their case they cease to be convincing. 

This also explains the propulsive power of the 
eonvictions of creative leaders. Their convictions 
have a way of projecting themselves with tremendous 
carrying power through long periods of time. Sue- 
cessive generations, lifting up their own problems 
in the light of these convictions, find them vibrant 
with appeal because they answer to the reality that 
wells up in their own experience. This also explains 
the power of self-renewal that resides in these con- 
victions. Creative ideas find themselves conditioned 
and modified by the social and intellectual back- 
grounds of different racial groups or by the changes 
in thought-patterns that come with the movement 
of time. And yet, as Christianity in particular has 
demonstrated, creative ideas have a way of freeing 
themselves from the immediate and the temporal 
and of reasserting their essential character. 

On the contrary, ideas that are handed down 
through tradition—that are “told” to passive learn- 
ers through a process of instruction apart from ex- 
perience—are utterly lacking in convincing or carry- 
ing power. There is no life in them. Nor is this all. 
Themselves subject to the forces of spiritual decay, 
they set up mental and spiritual decay in the lives 
of those who learn them. They destroy the delicate 


THE PRINCIPLE OF REALITY 137 


fibre of the intellectual life. They undermine the 
integrity of moral judgment and spiritual discern- 
ment. They make religionists, but not religious per- 
sons. Religion is shunted off into desert regions of 
dogma, ceremonial, and Pharisaism and lost there. 
The religionist may even lose all sense of moral and 
spiritual values. 

There is no more striking recorded insight into this 
fact than that found in one of the addresses of the 
prophet-statesman Isaiah, in Isaiah 29. The prophet 
confronted the political leaders of Jerusalem with 
the announcement that in a little more than a year 
the city would be besieged by its powerful enemy, 
Sennacherib. To him it was a moral event, with 
tremendous moral issues. To him the issues were 
so clear as to seem self-evident and inevitable. But 
when he confronted the national leaders with the 
announcement of the impending siege he met only 
with stolid and stupid indifference. Astonished at 
such moral and practical insensibility, he sought for 
a reason. With marvellous insight he arrived at the 
conviction that the moral and spiritual insensibility 
of the nation was due to the fact that its religion 
consisted only in forms and traditions—a religion 
that had been “taught them by rote.’? Here in 
sharpest outlines are set forth the soul of a religious 
person whose convictions well up out of immediate 
experience and the soul of the religionist who has 
“learned by rote” his religion but has never related 
it to the warm and moving current. of his practical 
life. And here likewise is a warning to religious 
educators that religion cannot be “‘learned”’ from 
precepts or materials or any of the mechanics of in- 
struction; it must enter life through the avenues of 
experience. 


1388 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


The sense of reality in religious ideas, emotions, 
and attitudes lies, secondly, in the integral relation 
of religion to the whole of life. Normal experience 
tends, on the whole, to centre in some sort of unity, 
in some organized whole. In this respect ideas are 
not unlike cells in the tissues of the body. They 
derive their life from the vitality and energy of the 
whole organism. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes that 
become split off from the rest of experience tend, 
normally, to decay. This is why ideas that are vital 
at one time lose all grip at another time; the main 
current of experience has simply moved on and left 
them isolated and stranded. No idea or attitude can 
hope to maintain its vital energy or its moving in- 
fluence upon experience which is not related in a 
direct and intimate manner td the main move- 
ment of one’s experience. 

Religion not infrequently exhibits a tendency to 
become departmentalized, to move from the centre 
of experience to its margins, where it takes its place 
beside the other departmentalized bodies of experi- 
ence. Its centre then becomes, not the whole of life, 
but its own specialized beliefs, ceremonies, institu- 
tions. An increasingly sharp line appears between 
the “‘sacred’”’ and the “secular.” It assents to such 
formulas as “‘Business is business and religion is 
religion.”” Less and less are religious beliefs and 
practices modified by the economic, social, political, 
zesthetic, and intellectual concerns of society. Cor- 
respondingly less and less do the ideas and beliefs 
of religion exert any effective influence upon the 
conduct of life. But this is contrary to the essential 
nature of religion, which, at its best, centres in the 
whole of life. 

The first step of isolation is followed by a series 


THE PRINCIPLE OF REALITY 139 


of consequences that sap the life out of religion. 
Convictions become dogmas. Religious activities de- 
generate into meaningless and worthless forms. The 
institutions of religion which were the organs through 
which it found much of its expression and got much 
of its work done, become extraneous overhead or- 
ganizations that lay a deadening hand upon the 
spirit. Finally, religion loses its moral and spiritual 
sensitiveness. The soul of religion is dead. In the 
name of God it fastens its dead weight upon prog- 
ress, opposing the discovery of truth, stoning the 
prophets, and standing as the arch-champion of 
things as they are. And so it turns out that imstitu- 
tionalized, dogmatic, anti-social, and unethical “‘re- 
ligion”’ becomes an obstacle in the way of God, cru- 
cifying His Son and defeating His purpose, so that 
God has had to set aside repeatedly in the course of 
history institutionalized forms of religion and their 
overzealous custodians in order to make way for 
the prophets of reality and the religion of the spirit. 
Religion, as the psychologist and, increasingly, the 
sociologist are coming to see clearly, belongs to the 
whole of life. When it becomes less than that the 
nemesis of decay overtakes it, and it ceases to be 
religion. In this relation of religion to the whole of 
life or its isolation from the whole of life, as nowhere 
else, lie the hope and the peri! of religion. 

A third source of the sense of reality lies in the 
fact that ideas and ideals “‘work”’ when applied to 
the actual situations of life. To be sure, the basis 
of the test must extend over a wide range of social 
experience and over considerable periods of time. 
But, as we have had occasion to observe in our con- 
sideration of the origin and function of knowledge, 
ideas and ideals arise out of experience. It follows 


140 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


that in the degree that they correspond to reality 
they will also fit back into experience in so far as 
the new experience is substantially the same as the 
one from which the ideas arose. This continuous 
and smooth working of ideas in the field of expe- 
rience gives to them a feel of firmness and reliability 
that begets confidence in them, much as one comes 
to have confidence in the dependability of a motor 
that never fails to perform smoothly under all con- 
ditions. It is in the realm of the physical sciences 
that the relation of the sense of reality attaching to 
an idea and its smooth working in experience is most 
apparent. Through a coimcidence of circumstances, 
the scientist is led to suspect that certain sequential 
relations between elements, let us say physical or 
chemical, exist. On this more or less slender basis 
he erects a hypothesis which, at the beginning, is 
nothing more than a guess. As long as the idea re- 
mains nothing more than a guess it carries with it 
a fringe of uncertainty as to its correspondence to 
reality. But in dealing with a physical science the 
factors remain relatively constant. The scientist 
tests his idea by proceeding to put it into operation 
as though it were true. All verification is nothing 
more nor less than putting the hypothesis to the 
test of experience. And since in the physical sci- 
ences the factors are constant, if they are perfectly 
understood one or two trials are usually sufficient 
to establish or to destroy the claims of the idea to 
reality. If, for example, the combination of certain 
chemical elements yields the expected results on the 
first test, that will usually be considered sufficient 
proof. It is not so easy to test ideas in the biological 
sciences because the factors are much more variable 
and it is exceedingly difficult to understand all of 


THE PRINCIPLE OF REALITY 141 


them perfectly. A large time element enters in. As 
a consequence, one testing does not suffice to estab- 
lish the reliability of a hypothesis. There must be 
many experiments over long periods of time and 
under varied circumstances. For these reasons the 
“laws”? governing the appearance of characteristics 
in species retain a persistent fringe of uncertainty 
and continue to remain only hypotheses. They will 
doubtless yield in time to certainty. But it is when 
one comes to social and spiritual phenomena that 
the reality of ideas is established with greater diffi- 
culty. The reason is that the factors involved are 
so complex and variable. The time element assumes 
an extremely important rdle. Experimentation in 
these fields becomes very difficult. One can never 
be wholly certain that other factors that escape ob- 
servation are not operating. It is necessary, there- 
fore, that the test of the validity of ideas in the realm 
of the higher ethical and spiritual values extend over 
a wide range of individual and social experience and 
over very considerable periods of time. Some of the 
loftiest moral and spiritual ideals have seemed, when 
viewed in a narrow setting and with reference to 
immediate outcomes, to be highly impractical but, 
when given time and a wide range of experience, to 
be fundamentally sound. The teaching of Jesus re- 
garding non-resistance has seemed to many an ut- 
terly impracticable doctrine. But a wider experience 
has begun to demonstrate its validity in individual 
relations, and recent movements in international 
affairs are continually pointing to the conclusion 
that it may be the only way out for a war-burdened 
and war-destroyed society. 

Here, however, we have in mind not so much the 
validation of knowledge as the effect of experience 


142 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


upon ideas. The point of view in this instance is 
educational, not philosophical. The problem of the 
educator is to discover the way in which the sense 
of reality may be given to the ideas, ideals, and atti- 
tudes that the immature should acquire for the or- 
dering of their experience. But it turns out that the 
way in which the sense of reality attaches to ideas 
is the way in which they are validated to the philos- 
opher—in and through experience. All of which 
means to the religious educator that if the concepts 
of religion are to be real and vital in the life of the 
growing religious person they cannot come to him 
through formal and external instruction or precepts, 
but through the process of actual living under the 
influence of religious ideals. 

Furthermore, religious ideas should be looked upon 
in no sense differently from other ideas in their re- 
lation to the control of experience. As the highest 
function of any knowledge is control, so the highest 
function of religious ideas and motives is not sim- 
ply that they should be understood and accepted, 
but that they should be put into practice in the 
day-by-day relations and activities of life. These 
ideas should have the power fo make a difference in 
the lives of individual persons and of society. In 
fact, precisely that is the mission of Christianity. 
It has a work to do in the gradual transformation 
of human lives and human society. The religious 
educator can scarcely be true to the genius of the 
Christian religion unless he begets in the learner this 
dynamic, experimental attitude toward Christian 
truth. He should be led to think of Christian truth 
as a power to be administered. This means that he 
should be given the attitude of experimenting with 
it in an effort to remake himself and society on a 


THE PRINCIPLE OF REALITY 143 


Christian basis. Nothing can possibly give to ideas 
the sense of their reality and worth like getting re- 
sults from them in the conduct of human life. 

All of which is to say that when ideas are put to 
the test on the highest personal and social plane, that 
which gives to them the firmest sense of reality is 
the fact that they either further or frustrate the 
dominant purpose of the individual or of the group. 
If the outreach of life is toward that fullness of a 
self-realized life which it is the function of religion 
to give, then the fact that certain ideas, ideals, and 
motives lead toward freer, more spiritual, more 
brotherly, more serviceable persons and a social 
order of the same type, clothes them not only with 
reality but with a profound sense of worth. 

The greatest consequence, therefore, which re- 
ligious education suffers when it attempts to impart 
religious concepts and virtues apart from actual 
experience is the loss of the sense of reality. The 
feel of firmness and substantiality, if there ever was 
any, gives place to a feel of illusion. This danger is 
the greater because religion deals with intangible, 
not material and obtrusive, values. Or, if the feel 
of illusion is not present, there is merely the failure 
of religious ideas to make themselves felt. They be- 
come neutral and ineffective, A religious idea can 
no more hope to be kept alive apart from religious 
experience than a mathematical formula apart from 
mathematical calculations or a political programme 
that has become doctrinaire apart from the outcomes 
of concrete and practical political situations. Is it 
any marvel that some persons wonder whether “there 
is anything in religion” when they have never felt the 
tug of its ideas and motives as these ideas and mo- 
tives have taken hold of experience and transformed 


144 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


it, but have been “‘taught”’ by memoriter methods 
what others have thought and felt about religion? 
A second consequence is the loss of interest. This 
is only another way of saying that religious ideals 
have ceased to have worth for the learner, if they 
ever had any worth. Desire is the outreach of per- 
sons toward ends that are felt by them to possess 
worth. Interest is that bond that unites the desir- 
ing person and the desired end in one continuous 
process. It follows that in order to awaken interest 
in persons ends must be concrete, specific, and not 
so remote as to lose all gripping and moving power 
upon the person. This explains why formal subjects 
in school awaken no interest in the learner. Such 
bearing as they have upon practical conduct, if they 
have any at all, is so remote as to evoke no forth- 
reaching on the part of the learner. This also ex- 
plains why abstract virtues lifted out of their normal 
setting in practical life become formal and uninter- 
esting. As a result, recourse must be had to ex- 
traneous motives to stimulate interest in religion— 
rewards from buttons and badges up, contests, all 
the mechanical devices that put “pep” into religion. 
One of the most lamentable consequences is the 
split mind. When religious ideas and habits are 
built up without relation to experience and the rest 
of life, religion not only becomes sterile and ineffec- 
tive in its influence upon life, but it results in a dual 
set of standards, values, and motives. Religion as a 
thing apart gets itself organized into a separate body 
of beliefs and practices limited to sacred days and 
sacred places. One’s secular interests are equally 
organized as a system within themselves. As a re- 
sult the person is at home in either system and his 
thinking and conduct within that system are wholly 


THE PRINCIPLE OF REALITY 145 


consistent. But between the systems there is a great 
gulf fixed, and there is no commerce between his 
religious ideals and his secular ideals. The result is 
a destructive dualism of life, not to say inconsistency 
between religious idealism and practical conduct. 
This may be more the fault of a defective religious 
education than of the unfortunate person himself. 
Professor Thorndike tells of a girl in New York who 
had studied about the lordly Hudson River out of a 
book on geography and was later very much sur- 
prised to discover that the river that daily flowed by 
Riverside Drive was the Hudson. Much of the failure 
of religious idealism to carry over into the practical 
conduct of life is due to the fact that no mental asso- 
ciation has ever been made between religious ideals 
and practical conduct. 

A special word should be said in this connection 
concerning religious emotions. Because the emo- 
tions are shifty and are frequently accompanied by 
reactions in proportion to their intensity, they con- 
stitute a special problem in connection with the sense 
of reality in religion. By reason of its very nature, 
religion is heavily charged with emotion. This arises 
from the fact that it centres in values, and in a par- 
ticular sort of values—those that gather up into 
themselves all the worth and meaning of life. In 
the gap that we have described within which the 
sense of value arises, emotions also arise. In fact, 
in the value situation the most powerful emotions 
are generated that are known to man. This fact has 
sometimes misled students of religion into con- 
ceiving it in terms of the emotions, as others have 
done with equal error in conceiving it in terms of the 
intelligence. The presence of delay, uncertainty, and 
effort—all these powerfully heighten the accompany- 


146 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


ing emotions. The point here is, however, that emo- 
tions, especially the more pronounced emotions, not 
infrequently lead to a misgiving sense of unreality 
in experience, especially after the emotion has sub- 
sided. Modern psychology is less certain than it 
might be concerning the constructive value of the 
emotions. They warm experience and give tone to 
the will, provided they are not too violent. Beyond 
a certain limit they derange the mechanism of re- 
sponse and interfere with clear and accurate think- 
ing. Considering the fact that emotion plays a very 
large part in the mass mind, it does make ideas and 
programmes effective with the many. But whatever 
modern psychology may come to judge the function 
of the emotions to be, it is the more important that 
they be kept wholesome in religion by causing them 
to hover close to a sound religious experience that 
is centred, not in emotional upheavals and _ senti- 
mental vaporings, but in the steady, consistent, pur- 
posive bringing to bear of the ideals and purposes 
of the Kingdom of God upon the practical outcomes 
of personal and social living. 


x 
THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 


UNLEss experience is built together nto an inte- 
grated whole, it tends to fall apart into unrelated 
fragments. One of the basic considerations in the 
achievement of a sound and effective personality 
emerges at just this point. Personality, we have 
seen, consists of a continuum of organized expe- 
rience. In the lower orders of personality experience 
is more or less loosely organized. In the higher or- 
ders it is definitely and coherently organized. More- 
over, the centre of organization is a set of values 
which, when viewed subjectively, appear as a group 
of desires and, when viewed objectively, as a group 
of valued ends toward which experience is moving. 
In the highest forms of personality these values are 
consciously organized and held before the self as 
ends to be consciously striven for. It sometimes 
happens that more than one organizing centre arises 
within a self, in which case there results a dual or 
split personality. There may be even more than 
two personalities. In the event of this split, one 
organized continuum comes to the fore and the other 
is retired, or conversely. Thus at one moment the 
self is person number one, and at another moment 
person number two. Each set of values and its cor- 
responding continuum of experience constitute a 
complete system within themselves. As long as the 
active centre of experience moves within one or the 
other of these parallel systems of values, ideas, and 
motives, the behavior of. the person is consistent with 
147 


148 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


itself. But each system is inconsistent with the 
other system. It is thus possible, as in the case of 
Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for the same self to 
act in exactly opposite and irreconcilable ways. 
Two or more potential personalities are in process 
of organization, any one of which may be counted 
upon to act consistently with itself. The higher 
types of personality are absolutely impossible apart 
from an integrating process. The chief mark of 
low-grade personality, as in the case of the sub- 
normal and the insane, is the inability of persons 
to relate their experiences in such a way that they 
will hold together in some sort of unitary and con- 
sistent pattern. In the absence of an integrating 
bond, experiences just happen; that is, persons re- 
spond promiscuously to all'sorts of situations in- 
volving the attention, the emotions, and the will. 
As a result, activity has neither meaning, worth, nor 
effectiveness. More than that, promiscuous expe- 
rience loses its dynamic quality. Having no organ- 
ized end toward which it is moving, it becomes 
static. It possesses neither movement nor direction. 
It arrives nowhere and effects nothing. 

Moreover, the integrating bond is in the mind. 
It consists of the perception of the connections that 
bind experience together. Two persons may have 
the same experience, as far as the external elements 
are concerned, but its meaning will be utterly differ- 
ent in the two instances. Two workmen may be 
employed in the same factory and may work side by 
side in the manufacture of the same kind of article, 
let us say of shoes. To one the experience begins 
and ends with the handling of certain materials, the 
running of them through a machine process, and 
the passing on of the unfinished article to the work- 


THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 149 


man who is to add the next increment of utility. 
His work is wholly mechanical and routine. It 
finds and leaves the particular thing he is doing 
isolated and meaningless. His companion, on the 
other hand, perceives the relation which his work 
sustains to the remainder of the whole process in- 
volved in the manufacture of the article, the rela- 
tion of the particular process in which he is engaged 
to the whole industrial system, and the relation of 
industry to the entire social order. He perceives 
the connection between his present act and the 
events that have led up to it in the raising of cattle, 
perhaps in foreign lands, in the transportation of 
the hides from the place of origin to the factory, 
in the increments of utility other fellow-workmen 
have imparted to the process before it reached his 
hands, in the sharing of his labor with fellow-work- 
men who will come after him, and in the service 
which his labor renders to the comfort and well- 
being of society. Similarly, he perceives the relation 
of his productive labor to his personal and domestic 
life, to the education of his children, to the enrich- 
ment or the impoverishment of his own personality. 
In this way his productive labor becomes integrated 
into the whole range of his own personal experience 
and into the relations that reach out into the intri- 
cate texture of social life and bind him to his fellows 
in an ongoing common life. The integrating bond 
in this, as in all other instances, is not to be found 
in the external aspects of the experience, but within 
the mind itself. The reason the bond is not formed 
in the case of the subnormal or the insane is because 
the mind is defective and is incapable of perceiving 
the connections. No amount of effort, except in 
certain types of mental dislocation, can remedy this 


150 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


defect. Even in the case of normal persons it is en- 
tirely gratuitous to assume that the connections will 
automatically be made. They are the result, for the 
most part, of intelligent and purposive effort. 

Consequently, the securing of integration, of con- 
tinuity, in experience should be one of the primary 
eoncerns of the educator. In fact, the function of 
education could be stated in terms of organizing ex- 
periences in such a way that they will not only be 
ordered and cumulative, but that the connection 
between them will be made so obtrusive that they 
will not escape the learner. 

To the religious educator this consideration is of 
unique Importance. Because religion consists in the 
fusion of all values into a fundamental meaning and 
worth of life, one of its fundamental contributions 
to experience is the capacity of religion to unify 
experience. Historically, it has furnished one of the 
most effective social bonds. It is true that the bond 
it has furnished has too often consisted of an external 
and authoritative sanction. But that fact does not 
at all arise out of the character of religion. Religion 
is Just as capable of working from within. In fact, 
religion, when truest to its essential nature, has 
always worked from within, through a vital and in- 
trinsic sanction. It is normally the organizing centre 
around which all specialized values relate them- 
selves to the whole of life. 

The farther society advances the greater its need 
for a unifying factor becomes. The normal movement 
of all developing societies is in the direction of dif- 
ferentiation and specialization. Perhaps no insti- 
tution better illustrates this tendency than the fam- 
ily in the transformations it has undergone. As an 
economic unit, the older type of household provided 


THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 151 


for all its needs. It raised its own grain, fruits, 
vegetables, meats, and fibres, and prepared them 
for consumption through simple processes of plant- 
ing, cultivating, harvesting, grinding, preserving, 
spinning, and weaving in which all the members of 
the family participated. In a similar way the health 
of the family was cared for by the use of simple 
home-made remedies. The education of the chil- 
dren consisted of some formal instruction by the 
parents and of participation in the practical activi- 
ties of the group. Religion and morals were taught 
both by precept and example and by the carrying 
on of religious activities by the entire group. In a 
developed society, however, one after another of 
these functions and activities has been taken over 
by an outside specialized agency. Food is bought in 
an already partially prepared state from the grocery, 
the meat shop, the dairy; clothing is bought ready- 
made at the clothier’s; health is cared for by a highly 
specialized medical profession; education is pro- 
vided for almost exclusively by the school; religious 
activities and training are taken over for the most 
part by the church; amusement and recreation are 
provided by commercialized agencies that have no 
organic relation to the family; the living itself is 
made in a factory or commercial concern that has 
no immediate connection with the home. In the 
same way, the earliest societies themselves are sim- 
ple and homogeneous. But as civilization advances 
they become highly differentiated and stratified on 
the basis of specialized interests and activities. In 
time this process proceeds so far as to threaten the 
disruption of society. Increasingly the students of 
society are becoming conscious of finding in this 
need for some unifying influence one of the most 


152 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


urgent problems of the modern world. The speciali- 
zation of interests, activities, and social classes, to- 
gether with a rapidly growing individualism, has 
so far dissolved the social bond that society itself is 
in danger of falling to pieces. The religious educator 
owes it to the integrating resource which he has in 
his possession in religion and to the social order to 
enlarge and deepen his conception of the unifying 
function of religion. 

Within the more limited range of individual life, 
the religious educator must come to a new appre- 
ciation of the integrating and unifying function of 
religion in experience. It is in religious experience 
that personal life finds its integrating centre. In 
personal life religion can effect what philosophy 
cannot hope to accomplish. Philosophy, which also 
looks at life and existence from the standpoint of its 
wholeness and total meaning, approaches it from 
the standpoint of intellectual interpretation. Re- 
ligion, on the other hand, approaches it from the 
standpoint of fundamental values. Religion finds 
its expression in the will and its field of operation 
in the practical activities of life. What, therefore, 
philosophy contemplates and criticises religion is, 
by its nature, competent to bring to pass. Perhaps 
history offers no more striking instance of the rela- 
tive effectiveness of philosophy and religion than in 
their relation to Greeco-Roman life in the first cen- 
tury A. D. Philosophy, notwithstanding its insights 
and its theoretical systems of ethics, was powerless 
to stay the onrush of materialism and sensualism 
that was about to engulf civilization in utter ruin. 
This result Christianity effected by offering a way 
of life grounded in fundamental social, ethical, and 
spiritual values fused in the passion of love. 


THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 153 


Where, then, is the religious educator to seek for 
the bonds that secure the continuity of experience? 

The first bond is to be found in the interrelated- 
ness of all experience. Professor Basil Lanneau Gil- 
dersleeve is said once to have remarked that, no 
matter at what point one made a beginning, if he 
would follow out the implications of that experience 
through all its ramifications and relations, he would, 
in time, become a liberally educated man. This re- 
mark shows a clear and penetrating insight into the 
nature of experience. It rests upon that infinite 
number of relations that bind each unit of experience 
to every other unit, provided the relation is per- 
ceived in the mind of the learner. The agriculturist, 
to lift an illustration from a field in which activity 
has been too often blind, may take his point of de- 
parture from the raising of the commonest grain, 
let us say wheat. If he is sensitive to the connec- 
tions of his apparently menial act with the whole 
sweep of experience, he finds himself working in a 
chemical laboratory transforming chemical sub- 
stances in the soil and atmosphere and moisture 
into new and living forms. He is manipulating 
forces that introduce him to the whole realm of 
physics. In dealing with living organisms he finds 
himself at the centre of the science of biology. 
The seasons through which he plants and reaps 
bring him into relation with the astronomical uni- 
verse. The distribution of his product brings him 
into relation with geography, the means of trans- 
portation and communication, and the entire eco- 
nomic process of exchange. In the consumer is rep- 
resented an entire social order whose needs he is 
helping to supply. If only those connections that 
lie immediately at hand are mentioned, they are 


154 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


sufficient to make it clear that the universe of things 
and persons comes to a focus in his humble, every- 
day activity. When one moves from these so-called 
“practical”? activities into the fields of the various 
sciences, the interrelation of experience becomes 
more consciously apparent. The psychologist finds 
himself confronted with the necessity of knowing 
the general facts of biology, physiology, and soci- 
ology. The sociologist can accomplish nothing of 
moment until he understands biology, psychology, 
and the various special social sciences. 

In the practical activities of the social engineer 
one is brought promptly and vigorously into con- 
tact with an infinite number of contributing fac- 
tors. Does one attack the problem of delinquency? 
Then he runs immediately into heredity, education, 
incomes, standards of living, unemployment, na- 
tionality, race, associations. Does he attack disease 
or poverty or war? In every instance he finds himself 
caught up in an intricate mesh of biological, eco- 
nomic, social, and intellectual factors that ramify 
throughout the whole range of human relations and 
functions. The older psychologists found the study 
of man’s mental life comparatively easy as they 
traced its movement through perception, memory, 
imagination, concepts, and judgments. But the 
modern psychologist finds. his task much more diffi- 
cult and complicated as he studies the influence of 
the glands and finds himself confronted with social 
determinants of an almost infinite variety in the 
formation of the mental patterns and the mental 
content of the individual person. 

A new and surprising light has been thrown upon 
the whole matter of the interconnections of various 
types of experience through the study of the sub- 


THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 155 


conscious. Of the processes that go on in these hid- 
den depths psychology knows as yet all too little. 
They come to light in such mental phenomena as 
dreams and defense activities; and the psycho- 
analyst has been successful in tracing through the 
dark mazes unsuspected connections that bind ex- 
periences together in the most unexpected manner. 
However great the work of exploration that needs 
to be done in this shadowy realm of mental life, the 
little that is known bears testimony to the uncon- 
scious interrelatedness of experience. 

The second bond that gives continuity to expe- 
rience is that of antecedent and consequent. By 
this bond the past, the present, and the future are 
bound together into one continuous process. The 
present experience is the direct outgrowth of past 
experience as the future, in its turn, will be the direct 
outgrowth of present experience. In such a matter 
as choosing a vocation, the present choice has its 
roots in past decisions, environmental influences, and 
sets of mind. A current drift in the group of which 
one is a member in the direction of a certain occu- 
pation or profession, the counsel of an interested and 
trusted friend, the reading of an impressive biog- 
raphy—all these previous experiences weight the 
choice of the present moment, perhaps to the point 
of effecting a permanent decision. Once the choice 
has been made, it colors all future choices and courses 
of action—the extent and character of one’s edu- 
cation, his place of residence, his standards of living, 
the companionships he will form, the professional 
associations he will join, the kind of journals he will 
read, perhaps even his success or failure in life. In 
this way no experience exists in isolation, but is set 
within a series of forward-moving experiences. 


156 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


It is this quality of experience that gives it an 
outlook in two directions. On the one hand, it is 
retrospective. As a consequence, its antecedents lie 
in the past. Consequently, it can only be accounted 
for in terms of the past. To understand the factors — 
that in the past gave rise to it is to understand the 
present experience. Moreover, the understanding of 
the past waits upon the issues of the present mo- 
ment. The clearest foresight can never be quite 
certain what the outcomes of the present will be. 
It is this quality of uncertainty that gives to expe- 
rience its risks and adventure. On the other hand, 
experience is anticipatory. The direction which ex- 
perience is given in the present moment will result 
in certain consequences in the future. It is at this 
point that the element of control enters into expe- 
rience. As a result, the more intelligent and pur- 
posive experience is, the more its outlook shifts from 
retrospect to prospect; to the bringing of certain de- 
sired ends to pass through the intelligent ordering of 
present experience. It is the fact that the present 
experience is the consummation of the past and at 
the same time the point of departure for the future 
that gives to the present moment its intense meaning 
and significance. 

Science has been most keenly and clearly aware of 
these relations of antecedents and consequents. In 
its older terminology it spoke of them as “causes” and 
“effects.” It is more content now to speak of them 
in terms of antecedents and consequents. The central 
interest of science is focused on this relation. As in 
no other department of human activity, science has 
perfected a technic for dealing with these factors, 
whereby irrelevant factors are eliminated and the 
field of investigation is narrowed until a correlation is 


THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 157 


discovered between a specific antecedent and a spe- 
cific consequent. When the correlation is sufficient- 
ly established, the relation is reduced to a formula, 
and the formula is used thereafter as a method of 
control, as in applied physics, chemistry, biology. 
Thus far the greatest progress in science has been 
in the field of material processes. Only recently has 
man turned his scientific technic in the direction of 
the factorizing of his own experience, either in its 
personal or social aspects. But it is to be hoped 
that as he acquires more and more of insight into 
the nature of experience he will be able to factorize 
it and bring it under more and more certain control. 

It is this bond that furnishes the psychological 
ground for the conception of education as a continu- 
ous reconstruction of experience. According to this 
conception the experimental approach to experience 
is the most promising one. ‘This approach focuses 
the attention upon the outcomes of the present ac- 
tivity. Attention shifts alternately from the results 
achieved to the process and from process to results. 
This is the method that has yielded the greatest re- 
sults in science and in all forms of practical activity 
where the process has been brought under the direc- 
tion of intelligence. From this point of view, the 
chief function of education is to create in the learner 
that attitude of mind that runs forward from the 
present activity to its outcomes, criticises them, and 
constantly readjusts its activity with reference to 
desirable outcomes. 

It is this bond also that offers the opportunity for 
training in intellectual, moral, and social responsi- 
bility. The sense of responsibility can only be cre- 
ated in persons when they perceive that their think- 
ing, purposes, and acts have far-reaching conse- 


158 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


quences that affect not only their personal lives but 
the lives of others, the cause which they represent, 
and society in general. The responsible person is 
one who has learned to scrutinize his acts for the 
antecedents that they contain, to run forward m 
his mind to the probable outcomes in their bearing 
upon himself and others, and to abide by the con- 
sequences of his decisions in the light of these con- 
siderations. 

The third bond that gives continuity to experience 
is an organized and dominant purpose. This domi- 
nant purpose sets the objective toward which expe- 
rience is moving. The unification of desire can come 
only through the subordination of certain desires to 
certain other desires. Once life begins to take on a 
central purpose, that purpose becomes the regulator 
of all other purposes. 

A dominant purpose accomplishes four functions 
in experience. For one thing, it gives it direction 
and momentum. It makes experience active; dy- 
namic, creative. It eventuates in an achieved end 
rather than a haphazard result. The inventor who 
is in pursuit of a project tends to become thoroughly 
engrossed in it. Its grip upon him may become so 
great as to cause him to turn aside from social en- 
gagements, recreation, or convenience in the inter- 
est of the task in hand. One distinguished worker is 
said to have become so engrossed in his enterprise 
that he entirely overlooked the hour of his wedding 
and had to be reminded of it. Such turning aside 
from competing interests works no hardship, be- 
cause the dominant interest subordinates all other 
interests. Activity gathers drive and momentum as 
the worker gets further into his enterprise and es- 
pecially as he nears his goal. It is so with all reform- 





THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 159 


ers, and with those who seek to make ideals effective 
in personal and social life. All clearly perceived ends 
that are striven for tend to set up a trend of forward- 
moving activity that organizes around itself com- 
peting interests and purposes into a unified move- 
ment of experience. 

In the second place, it exerts a highly selective in- 
fluence upon experience. Once a central and moving 
objective is set up, it at once determines what expe- 
riences further that purpose and what experiences 
frustrate it and what experiences are indifferent to it. 
It exerts the same influence upon experience that 
the purpose for which a building is to be used exerts 
upon an architect’s plan and upon the materials 
that will be used in its construction. If the building 
is to be a public library its structure is at once de- 
termined by the fact that books are to be housed 
im convenient stack-rooms, by the fact that provi- 
sions must be made for a reading-room, by the fact 
that arrangements must be made for a magazine 
section, and by the need for a central office. Its de- 
sign will be stately and the building will preferably 
be of stone, well set in an ample, landscaped site. 
If it is to be an office building the structure will be 
radically different. Provisions must be made for 
rooms and suites of rooms suitable to office use, with 
one floor above another to an indefinite height, with 
corridors and elevators. The materials are likely to 
be of brick, reinforced cement, or stone. Owing to 
the exigencies of business space, the skyscraper will 
be crowded into a street solidly with other similar 
business buildings. If the building is to be a private 
dwelling it will provide for a reception-room, library, 
dining-room, kitchen, sleeping-apartments, and all 
the conveniences of a home. Its materials will in- 


160 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


clude the widest range of variation to suit the taste 
of the persons who are to live in it. In a no less de- 
termining way does the adoption of a stable pur- 
pose in the achievement of character affect the selec- 
tion of experiences that persons will have. Once one 
has accepted for himself a certain character ideal, 
let us say the Christian life, certain attitudes, mo- 
tives, and habits of life at once become appropriate, 
while others at once become equally inappropriate. 
Those are definitely selected that fit into a Christian 
body of ideals and that further them; those are 
neglected that have little or no relation to, them, 
while those are positively rejected that are inimical 
to their realization. In like manner a business or 
professional man who adopts a code of ethics for 
his craft at once rejects certain methods that are 
out of keeping with that code, while he consciously 
and definitely adopts those that are consistent with 
it. He may even devise new methods and procedures 
that will seem to him to bring his practice into 
greater conformity with what he conceives to be 
professional under his adopted code. 

In the third place, it determines the sequence of 
experience. Under the influence of a dominant pur- 
pose experiences do not fall together in a hit or miss 
pattern. Each becomes a step in the progressive 
realization of an end. To revert to our architect’s 
plan, there is a starting point and a consummation 
of the process. The erection of the building begins 
with the laying of the foundation and proceeds with 
the building of the walls, the placing of the pillars of 
the facade, the finishing of the exterior and interior 
decorations. It is so with any experience that is mov- 
ing toward a dominant purpose. Such experience is 
genetic in character. 


THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 161 


Finally, experience that moves toward a dominant 
purpose is cumulative. Its insights are constantly 
deepening insights. The knowledge that it accu- 
mulates is a growing body of organized knowledge. 
The skills that it develops grow in certainty and pre- 
cision. Its technic is ever growing more refined and 
effective. It is like the cumulative knowledge, tech- 
nic, and skill of the expert as distinguished from that 
of the amateur. In order to become an expert in 
any given field of practical activity one must give 
himself chiefly to the lifetime pursuit of his specialty. 
To become an authority in any given field of knowl- 
edge the scholar must devote his career to patient 
research. No less is it true in the achievement of a 
moral and spiritual personality that one must de- 
vote to his enterprise untiring energy in the pro- 
gressive building up of permanent ideals, attitudes, 
motives, and habits. The same accumulation of in- 
sights, knowledge, and skills that makes one an ex- 
pert in the field of the practical arts, a master in 
the fine arts, or an authority in a chosen field of 
research is requisite in the development of the 
technic of moral and spiritual living. In this way a 
dominant and organized purpose will gather about 
itself the unwasted results of patient and arduous 
effort through long periods of time. 

What has been said of the individual purpose is 
also true of the social purpose. It is the ongoing 
purpose of a great cause that binds the thinking 
and achievements of many generations together into 
a progressive achievement. In a supreme sense is 
this true of the enterprises of the Kingdom of God. 
In the nature of the case the bringing of human life 
under the dominance of Christian ideals and motives 
cannot be accomplished for once and then regarded 


162 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


as a finished undertaking. In each generation it is 
a progressive achievement, and, because human life 
is lived generation by generation, the enterprise 
must be taken up anew with each renewal of the 
life of the race. With the unfinished task each 
generation passes on to its successors the experience 
of the past and its own experience in dealing with 
it. In this way the tides of human life may ebb and 
flow, but there abides as a continuum through it all 
the unfinished task of human reconstruction and the 
progressive realization of the Kingdom of God. One 
of the major objectives of religious education should 
be the effective initiation of the immature into that 
continuing purpose and the priceless inheritance of 
experience that it carries with it. 


XI 
WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM ? 


In the light of the foregoing considerations, we are 
now prepared to come directly to the question: 
What constitutes the curriculum as enriched and 
controlled experience ? 

Manifestly, the effect of this conception upon the 
content and organization of the curriculum will be 
as thoroughgoing as have been the historical con- 
ceptions of the curriculum as discipline, as knowl- 
edge, or as recapitulation. Furthermore, because 
the conception is so completely different from the 
historical conceptions, there are few precedents to 
guide one. This means that the whole problem of 
curriculum construction must for the most part be 
thought through from the beginning and the expe- 
rience curriculum constructed upon a new psychologi- 
cal basis. One thing is perfectly obvious—the ex- 
perience curriculum will be utterly different from 
the traditional curricula. Neither will it be possible, 
no matter how clear the basic principles may be, to 
set up out of hand the newer type of curriculum 
without a great number of tentative approaches 
and a vast amount of careful and wide-spread experi- 
mentation. Some beginnings in this direction have 
_ been made here and there, and all these attempts 

are of great value. But before anything like satisfac- 
tory results can be attained a broad foundation must 
be laid in research and wide-spread experimentation. 

Notwithstanding this fact, however, the main out- 
lines of the curriculum as enriched and controlled 

163 


164 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


experience are perfectly clear. Manifestly, the first 
step in the construction of the experience curriculum 
is to bring together in a whole and consistent view 
the fundamental principles upon which such a cur- 
riculum will rest. Out of the statement of funda- 
mental principles it is easy to discern the main out- 
lines of the structural framework of the curriculum. 

The fundamental element in the curriculum as en- 
riched and controlled experience will consist of a 
selected and organized body of actual experiences of 
children, young people, and adults. These expe- 
riences will be lifted clearly into consciousness, in- 
terpreted, and brought under control in the light of 
worthy ideas, ideals, and purposes through a co- 
operation of the mature and immature members of 
the social group. In this way educational experience 
will not take its pattern from the school, but from 
real life as ut is actually in process of being lived. 

Since, as we have seen, not all experiences are of 
equal value or of educational resourcefulness, there 
must be some criteria by which this body of expe- 
riences designed for curriculum use may be selected. 
These criteria grow directly out of the discussions in 
the preceding chapters. Since they have there been 
discussed in detail, they may be entered here with- 
out lengthy elaboration. 

The first consideration is that these experiences 
shall be real. Ii religion is to enter life as a factor 
of enrichment and control, it must enter it through 
the responses to the actual situations which present 
themselves in one’s response to his material and so- 
cial world. The religious educator dare not be mis- 
led by the fiction of a carry-over of training. The 
fundamental weakness of so much that has gone 
under the name of moral and religious education is 


WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 165 


that it has consisted of abstract precepts taught 
out of relation to real life or of training in biblical 
knowledge or other knowledge derived from books. 
Much of this instruction in later years has consisted 
of “expressional’’ work which has followed instruc- 
tion and which has seldom carried the ‘‘application”’ 
of moral and religious truth beyond artificial activi- 
ties. If moral and religious education is to effect 
changes in human life it cannot be carried on with 
this sort of procedure. The procedure is based upon 
a faulty psychology, inherited from the older types 
of traditional education. Activity, as the analysis of 
the nature of experience clearly demonstrates, is not 
the end of the learning process; it is the beginning 
of it. It would be better to say that activity and 
learning are different aspects of one and the same 
thing, which integrated thing, in normal life, con- 
stitutes experience. Experience is activity with 
meaning; but when activity takes on meaning, it is 
educative. In this respect modern education is ap- 
proximating the insight of the Great Teacher who 
laid it down as a fundamental characteristic of His 
method that he who would know the teaching must 
first do it. With Him, learning centred in values in- 
volving the will and was experimental. That is, with 
Jesus religion was a way of life, and the only way 
one could become religious was by actually living 
life religiously. 

A second consideration is that curriculum experi- 
ences should be typical. Two items are involved in 
this respect. One is that they should be typical with 
reference to the actual situations with which one is 
confronted in real life. That is, they should lift the 

essential relations, functions, and responsibilities of 
life into consciousness, get them reflected upon in 





166 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


the light of Christian ideals and motives, and acted 
upon in a Christian way. The second item is that 
they should be typical of the relations, functions, 
and responsibilities of the Christian community. It 
is assumed that some form of institutional, commu- 
nity life is essential to the continued and effective | 
promotion of Christian ideals, purposes, and under- 
takings. This organized community, the church in 
its ideal character, is necessary to the carrying on of 
these functions. The objectives of religious educa- 
tion, therefore, are not only to bring Christian mean- 
ing and control into the practical conduct of life but 
also to prepare the immature to take their places 
effectively and intelligently in the Christian com- 
munity. As in the practical conduct of life, the best 
preparation for living in the Christian community 
is through experience in living in it, which means 
that if that participation is to be effective, its essen- 
tial relations, functions, and responsibilities must 
be brought into consciousness, reflected upon, and 
acted upon. 

A third consideration is that those experiences 
should be selected in particular that present alter- 
natives and involve choices. The greatest educational 
results will not be derived from situations to which 
one can respond in but one way. Least of all will they 
be derived from a type of education in which one is 
told, apart from real and concrete situations, what 
he is expected to do. Learning proceeds to the 
highest advantage when the learner is confronted 
with a situation in which he may do several possible 
things but in which, after deliberation, he chooses to 
do the one that is in keeping with the established 
purpose and movement of his life. Instead of telling 
a child of the generous attitude that Abraham took 


WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 167 


toward Lot in offering him the better section of 
Palestine many generations ago, and urging upon him 
to take the same generous attitude in his relations to 
his fellows, it would be far better for the purposes of 
education to lift experiences out of the child’s every- 
day life, in which personal adjustments have to be 
made in the family, on the playground, and at 
school, to help him see that there are open to him 
selfish and unselfish ways of dealing with his fellows, 
and to help him choose an unselfish course of action 
because it is in keeping with Christian ideals. The 
educational value of the choice of Abraham under 
similar circumstances lies in the fact that it is capable 
of stimulating an unselfish choice in the learner and 
of suggesting ways in which the unselfish Christian 
attitude may be carried out in the child’s own situa- 
tion. To be sure, in the presence of such alternatives 
there is always the possibility that a wrong choice 
may be made. But this is an inevitable part of the 
risk that is always involved where choices must be 
made. As we have seen under the enrichment and 
control of experience, this is the type of experience 
that forces the situation and the response sharply 
into consciousness and secures reflection upon them. 
It is the only situation in which creative and respon- 
sible thinking is possible. It is the situation that 
lifts the response away from the mechanical bonds 
of reflex and instinct into the clear light of intelli- 
gence and choice. Substantial progress in character 
formation cannot proceed upon a lower basis. 

In the fourth place, experiences should be chosen 
that are continuous. Here again the selection must be 
made with two considerations in view. They involve 
the interrelatedness of all experience, on the one hand, 
and the antecedent-consequent relation in the on- 


168 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


going of any particular kind of experience—both 
considerations whose import has been before us in 
the discussion of the principle of continuity. In the 
light of this principle, the experiences that are se- 
lected as the basis of the curriculum should ramify 
into related fields of experience, and these ramifying 
implications should be made obvious. Continuity in 
this direction is of particular importance for religious 
education inasmuch as one of its objectives should 
be consciously to relate its ideals and motives to all 
experience. Similarly, attention must be given to 
the unfolding of experience whereby the present ex- 
perience has its outcomes in future experience. 
The learner should be led to make his choices in the 
conduct of life in the light of their consequences for 
the future. Crucial choices, such as the deciding of 
one’s vocation, choices regarding education, the se- 
lection of a life companion, the selection of one’s 
associates—any one of these may radically affect 
the whole future direction of one’s life. The appar- 
ently less crucial choices, such as taking a slight 
advantage in a game, cheating in an examination, or 
withholding material facts, may mark the beginning 
of an attitude toward others that will ripen in later 
life into sharp bargaining, undercutting a competitor, 
or defaulting. It is through the actual making of 
choices of this kind that the attitude of responsi- 
bility is created through the discernment of what 
issues are involved in the present situation and 
seeing these issues through to their consummation. 
It is this continuity that gives cumulative meaning 
to experience and an increasing precision and cer- 
tainty to its purposive direction. 

A fifth consideration lies in the fact that, other 
things being equal, those experiences should be se- 


WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 169 


lected that are capable of absorbing the largest 
amount of knowledge. Knowledge is at once the 
product and the instrument of intelligence. It fol- 
lows, therefore, that the greater the content of 
knowledge that experience carries, the clearer and 
more penetrating the intelligence that directs it 
will be. Furthermore, it is not to be thought for a 
moment that the grounding of education in expe- 
rience implies in the slightest degree a lessening of 
emphasis upon knowledge. Quite the contrary is 
true, as the analysis of the factors in the enrichment 
and control of experience has shown. Knowledge 
liberates by affording detachment from immediate 
and concrete experience through understanding by 
placing the present in a wider setting and by bring- 
ing it under control. This was a fundamental doc- 
trine in the assumptions of the Great Teacher. “Ye 
shall know the truth,” He said, “and the truth 
shall make you free.” Without the wider outlook 
which knowledge gives, experience, like Samson, is 
bound, blind, to the treadmill of the immediate and 
the concrete. 

In the sixth place, the experiences selected for 
curricular purposes should be capable of indefinite 
expansion. At the beginning, they must be so simple 
that they will fit into the limited world of the little 
child. As life advances toward maturity, they must 
fray out into all the relations, functions, and responsi- 
bilities which men and women who are caught up in 
the complex and difficult duties of life sustain. Expe- 
riences involving living and playing according to rules 
in the interest of the group and that are lifted for 
educational purposes out of the situations of the 
home, the school, and the playground, are continuous 
with and lead to those adjustments to other persons, 


170 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


to institutions, and to society in general that are the 
basis of law and order. Experiences involving fair 
play in the same situations lead to justice in the 
economic and social life of mature men and women. 
So also with experiences involving attitudes of good 
will, co-operation, and service as these move forward 
toward the larger and more complicated class, social, 
and international adjustments and the service which 
the privileged groups can render the underprivileged 
or retarded groups. To find through research and 
experimentation a core of experience that satisfies 
this demand of the curriculum is one of the first con- 
cerns of curriculum builders. 

In the seventh place, those experiences should be 
selected that are social and shared. Human life, as 
is becoming more and more apparent, is a social 
affair. Its ideas, customs, moral standards, ideals, 
attitudes are socially created. As life advances to 
higher levels its enterprises are increasingly co- 
operative undertakings. The learner is being pre- 
pared to take his place in a social life. The basis for 
understanding, sympathy, and co-operation, which 
are the essentials required in all associated living, 
is common experience and co-operation in shared 
enterprises. One of the great objectives of all edu- 
cation, whether secular or religious, is to afford a 
basis for these social attitudes. Growing out of the 
very nature of religion, it is of absolutely funda- 
mental concern that religion should accentuate these 
social appreciations and attitudes. One of the great- 
est weaknesses of traditional education is that it has 
regarded the learning process as an individual affair 
of building up perceptions through memory, imagina- 
tion, and concepts to judgments. This is precisely 
what learning is not. It is, through and through, a 


WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 171 


social process, and can only be carried on to the 
best advantage in a social situation. Instead of 
competition, education should aim at co-operation. 
Instead of cultivating attitudes of rivalry and 
antagonism it should cultivate attitudes of help- 
fulness. None of the attitudes of honesty are sacri- 
ficed by encouraging co-operation. Honesty may 
function just as effectively and vastly more humanly 
in situations involving mutual assistance. 

Finally, the experiences should be selected with 
reference to their requirement of the disciplined will. 
Real life is filled with situations that call for patience, 
perseverance, ability to turn aside from all distrac- 
tions, and a resolute, self-denying purpose to see 
things through. The discipline of the will will best 
take place in real situations of the delayed and frus- 
trating type. Real life has them in plenty. It is not 
necessary to resort to artificial situations in which 
to give the will gymnastic training. It is enough 
that in building the curriculum these actual and 
representative experiences shall find their normal 
place. The concern of the curriculum builders 
should be that these experiences be not overlooked 
or minimized. Here will spring up the most exacting 
discipline of all, and it will be the more rigid because 
it is self-imposed by persons who are deeply im- 
pressed with the value of certain outcomes in expe- 
rience. 

Once this body of actual experiences has been se- 
lected, the next step in building the curriculum will 
consist in the determination of the approaches in 
dealing with these experiences. The curriculum 
builder will need to return to the analysis of expe- 
rience and the factors that enter into its enrichment 
and control. When he does this he will find that the 


172 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


subject-matter of the curriculum will consist of three 
elements. 

The first of these will consist of the elements that 
enter inio the situation rtself. If the response is to 
be discriminating, the learner will break the situa- 
tion up into its constituent factors. He must culti- 
vate the attitude of not responding to situations by 
wholes, as though they were simple. As a part of 
his analysis of the situation he will also factorize the 
response to discover what outcomes are possible, 
together with his decision as to which outcomes are 
desirable and which undesirable. He will seek to 
discover the essential factors and will neglect those 
that are irrelevant. 

Thus, one who is learning to drive an automobile 
must first familiarize himself with the elements in 
the situation which the mechanism of the automo- 
bile presents. In addition to the larger elements of 
chassis, power plant, body, and running gear, he will 
need to study with the utmost care the details of 
the control mechanism. He will take note of the 
steering apparatus, and the effect upon the wheels 
of the movement of the steering wheel in one direc- 
tion or the other. He will note the mechanism of 
the gear shift and what movements are required to 
place the motor in reverse, first speed, second speed, 
high speed, or neutral. He will scrutinize the pedals, 
noting that one is the clutch and the other is the 
brake. He will note the manner in which the pedals 
operate to throw the motor in gear and out of gear, 
and the tension and distance required to bring the 
brakes into operation. He will identify the accelera- 
tor. He will note the emergency brake, the direction, 
distance, and tension of its motion. He will study his 
instrument board in order to familiarize himself with 


WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 173 


the indicators that inform him as to his ignition, 
battery, supply of oil, speed, and time of day. 
Perhaps in no other type of learning is it more neces- 
sary that the learner should use the utmost discrimi- 
nation in identifying each factor of the situation 
and in seizing upon the essential factor. And per- 
haps in no other type of situation are the conse- 
quences of right or wrong identifications and selec- 
tions more apparent—sometimes disastrously so. 

The second element in subject-matter will consist 
of the past experience of the learner. In the course of 
his own personal experience he has acquired certain 
knowledge and ideas through responding to identi- 
cal or similar situations, He has also built up cer- 
tain attitudes and habits in dealing with similar 
situations. If the new situation has much in com- 
mon with past situations, these habits will greatly 
further his adjustment to the new situation. If, on 
the other hand, the new situation is totally different 
from anything he has experienced in the past, the 
habits he possesses may be entirely useless to him, 
or they may even interfere with effective action in 
the present situation. A valuable part of past expe- 
rience, if it has been organized, is the development 
of certain purposes and points of view. 

How past experience functions in mastering the 
new situation is very apparent in the case of the 
person who is learning to drive the automobile. It 
is more than likely that he has seen automobiles 
before. He knows their main parts from having been 
around automobiles and having seen them handled. 
He may have ridden in them and seen them oper- 
ated. He has seen how they behave under the con- 
trol of a driver. Perhaps he himself has driven a 
car of another make. In that case everything he 


174 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


has learned about an automobile through previous 
experience is all to his advantage. If he has never 
had any experience with an automobile, the learn- 
ing process has to begin at the bottom. If he has 
learned to drive another automobile with a different 
gear shift, his old habits will for a time interfere 
with his learning the new control. But if he has 
had experience with automobiles, his learning to 
drive the new machine is comparatively easy, be- 
cause his attention may be directed entirely to those 
few factors that are entirely new. 

The third element in subject-matter will be the 
experience of others. His own knowledge and expe- 
rience are limited. But through the accumulation 
of knowledge that has arisen out of the experience 
of a vast number of other persons dealing with similar 
situations his own knowledge is infinitely enriched 
and extended. While the learner may avail himself 
of the direct experience of his contemporaries who 
are passing through similar experiences, the greater 
part of the assistance he will derive from this source 
will come from the accumulated experience of the 
past. Owing to this fact, this element in the cur- 
riculum may be called, for the most part, historical 
subject-matter. It represents that focus of insight 
and meaning which the available experience of all 
time is capable of throwing upon the problem of the 
present situation. This is the point at which knowl- 
edge will, for the most part, enter into experience. 

The use of the experience of others is admirably 
illustrated in the case of our novice learning to run 
an automobile. Learning to drive is too difficult 
and slow and dangerous to be undertaken without 
an instructor. The learner, therefore, makes his 
first attempt at learning under the instruction of 


WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 175 


an expert. The value of the instruction of the expert 
lies in the fact that he places at the disposal of the 
learner all of his exact and complete knowledge of 
automobile mechanisms. Before the learner takes 
the wheel, the expert points out to him the leading 
features of the mechanism so as to give a basis of 
understanding to the technic. He points out each 
factor of the situation—the wheel, the ignition con- 
trol, the gear shifts, the pedals, the starter, the ac- 
celerator, the emergency brake. Then, before the 
learner takes the wheel, the expert shows him how 
it is done. He answers every question the learner 
may wish to ask where there are points of unclear- 
ness. If the learner has an inquiring mind and is in 
the habit of going to the bottom of things he may 
have read any number of books on the history and 
construction of the gas engine and the various forms 
of locomotion. If so, he brings to his new experience 
a wealth of insight and understanding that adds 
meaning and zest to his taking over of the control 
of his own machine. In this respect his knowledge 
may equal that of the expert and his first attempts 
at control may be attended with unerring success. 
There is no point at which the employment of his- 
torical subject-matter may cease this side of all that 
is to be known about the various forms of locomo- 
tion and its history and function in an advancing 
civilization. 

In any case, however, the initiative begins and 
ends with the learner. Perhaps no illustration could 
better bring to light the experimental nature of 
learning. He must try out his analysis, the knowl- 
edge his own past experience has given him, and the 
knowledge that he has derived from others, including 
the experience that is recorded in books. In learn- 


176 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


ing, absolutely nothing can take the place of trial 
and error. With repetition comes habit, which is 
only another word for executive skill. With the at- 
tainment of a reasonable amount of dexterity in 
handling the situation the process may be said to be 
mastered, and the mind moves on to some new ex- 
perience that waits for understanding and mastery. 
And so on from experience to experience, until a 
rich and meaningful life under the control of intelli- 
gence and purpose is attained. 

While the mastering of a mechanical process such 
as learning to drive an automobile, because it is 
relatively simple, makes obvious the character of 
the content of the curriculum and the steps involved 
in the learning process, precisely the same categories 
of content and the same procedure obtain in learn- 
ing how to respond in a Christian way to the situa- 
tions presented by personal, economic, and social 
life. How, for example, does one learn how to con- 
duct an industry according to the ideals of Jesus? 
Clearly, by taking account of the elements involved 
in the industry itself, by appealing to his own past 
experience, and by going to such historical sources 
as may be afforded by the experience that others 
have had in dealing with the problem of industry 
in a Christian way. 

The first step will consist in a discriminatmg anal- 
ysis of the industry itself. It will be perceived as a 
social process that supplies one of the fundamental 
needs of society by working raw materials into the 
usable forms of the finished product. As the learner 
analyzes the situation, he will perceive that two fun- 
damental factors are involved in the conduct of the 
industry—capital and labor. As he proceeds with his 
analysis he will note that capital contributes the 





WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 177 


land, the plant, the machinery, and the raw materials. 
He will also note that labor contributes the human 
energy that is necessary to keep the plant in opera- 
tion, to feed the raw materials to the machines, and 
to take the finished product from them. As he presses 
his analysis from the Christian point of view further, 
he will discover that even underlying the economic 
factors of capital and labor are the still more funda- 
mental elements of the human factor and the material 
factor, each with its corresponding set of values. 

From such an analysis he will be able to deter- 
mine the possible outcomes in his conduct of the in- 
dustry. On the basis of the contribution of both 
labor and capital he will be able to determine whether 
or not the laborer as well as the capitalist should have 
a responsible share in the management of the in- 
dustry. On the same basis he will determine how 
the rewards of the industry in the form of profits 
and wages should be distributed among the various 
groups that contribute to the industry. On the 
basis of the function of the industry in society he 
will be able to decide whether the business shall be 
conducted as a service to society or as a means of 
exploiting society in the interest of private wealth. 
He will also be able to decide whether material values 
or human values shall be dominant in the conduct of 
the industry. This decision will materially affect his 
policy as to whether the plant shall be run for quan- 
tity production, with low wages, unsanitary work- 
ing conditions, unprotected machinery, and long 
hours, or whether the plant shall be run in the in- 
terest of the health, happiness, and improvement 
of the persons engaged in the business. 

Perhaps in no type of learning does the previous 
experience of the learner operate more effectively 


178 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


than in learning how to conduct an industry in a 
Christian way. If the learner belongs to a highly 
class-conscious capitalistic group, immediately his 
prejudices and class interests come into play. He 
may bring to the situation fixed habits of economic 
thought and a more or less inflexible point of view. 
These attitudes may have been sharpened and made 
bitter by such struggles as are involved in strikes 
and lockouts. The fact that he has inherited the 
plant and great wealth besides may accentuate his 
interest in maintaining the status of things as they 
are. If, on the other hand, he has emerged from the 
labor group and has lived and worked under con- 
ditions that have outraged his sense of justice, free- 
dom, and the right of self-determination, he may 
bring to the situation a highly developed class-con- 
sciousness and wish to foment a revolution against 
the owners of the plant and the entire existing social 
order. Or, in either case, if capitalist or laborer has 
been brought under the influence of the Christian 
point of view and motive, he may see in the situation 
an opportunity to reorganize that particular seg- 
ment of industry on the basis of good will, co-opera- 
tion, mutual understanding, and service to society. 

Certainly, in such a situation the Christian indus- 
trialist will wish to search the historical experience 
of others in dealing with this or similar industrial 
problems. As a Christian he will search the life of 
Jesus for His explicit pronouncements and assump- 
tions regarding these fundamental human and ma- 
terial factors. He will acquaint himself with the sci- 
ence of economics in its various branches, since this 
problem lies in its specific field of scientific thought. 
He will search history for social and economic the- 
ories of improvement and for experiments that have 


WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 179 


been made in the Christian reconstruction of various 
industries. He may even call in experts to make a 
survey of his plant and give him professional advice 
as to how he can reconstruct his business in such a 
way as make it more serviceable to society and a 
source of enrichment to the human beings who are 
associated with him in it. 

The experience curriculum will, then, consist of 
a body of carefully selected and organized experiences 
lifted out of the actual, ongoing life of the person or 
of the social group; of a critical study of the situa- 
tions themselves for their essential factors and their 
possible outcomes; of the ideas, ideals, attitudes, and 
habits that have emerged from the past experience 
of the learner and of the vast stores of historical sub- 
ject-matter that have descended from generation to 
generation and that contain in organized and avail- 
able forms the best that the race has thought and 
felt and purposed. One will miss the time-honored 
text-books and schedules of things to be learned. 
Instead one will find a body of experience that is feel- 
ing its way from point to point of meaning and con- 
trol as it moves out into the uncharted areas that 
skirt its ever-widening frontiers, and a rich body of 
source material in which the learner may see his 
own experience reflected and interpreted, and by the 
aid of which he may deepen his own insights into 
reality, widen the range of his own outlook upon life, 
and bring his own experience under conscious and 
certain control in the light of the most dependable 
knowledge, the worthiest ideals, and the highest 
purposes of the race. 


XII 
THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 


Since the curriculum consists in bringing the actual 
experience of the learner under conscious and pur- 
posive direction, the first step in the construction of 
the curriculum will be an analysis of that experience. 
This is true of experience in general; and, since 
growth is a primary characteristic of persons, es- 
pecially in the earlier period of life, there must be 
an analysis of experience at each of the various stages 
of growth. 

The discovery and analysis of the experience of 
growing persons is a problem of research. Significant 
fragmentary studies have been made in this field; 
but for the most part, so far as the experiences of 
the learner have been taken into account, the un- 
checked assumptions of persons dealing with chil- 
dren and young people have been relied upon. 
Manifestly, this is an inadequate basis for a thor- 
oughgoing procedure in curriculum-making based 
upon the conception of the curriculum as redirected 
and enriched experience. What is needed is a com- 
plete listing of a sufficient number of experiences to 
give an accurate picture of the experience of grow- 
ing persons, the analysis of these experiences, and 
their statistical mterpretation for curricular use. 
This is an extremely difficult task, and one that can 
only be successfully managed by the use of the pre- 
cise procedure of technical research. 

There are several methods of approach, of widely 
differing value. By far the least useful is the ques- 

180 


THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 181 


tionnaire method. The questionnaire is highly se- 
lective because the persons to whom it is likely to 
be sent are those who for one reason or another are 
likely to be more or less conspicuous on account of 
the characteristic that the investigator seeks to study. 
The selection is further accentuated by the fact that 
of the persons to whom questionnaires are addressed 
only those of a certain type are likely to reply, and 
that for the reason that they are particularly inter- 
ested in the characteristic which the search is de- 
signed to discover. Many persons shrink from anal- 
yzing their experiences, especially if these experiences 
are to pass under the scrutiny of others. It is almost 
certain that types of experience, particularly those 
of an intimate personal character or those that are 
likely to invite disapproval, will not be reported. 
Even the Census Report is subject to very consid- 
erable sources of error on matters respecting age or 
such abnormalities as feeble-mindedness or insanity. 
The result is that data collected by means of the 
questionnaire method are certain to be heavily 
weighted with certain types of experience, while 
whole masses of experience are likely to be omitted 
altogether. In addition to its being highly selective 
both as respects the persons to whom it is addressed 
and the persons replying, it is loaded with sugges- 
tion. The inquiries of the questionnaire are likely 
to take the form of more or less direct questions. 
These are likely to have the result of giving a set 
of mind to the correspondent that causes him un- 
consciously to overlook equally significant, and in 
some cases even more significant, experiences. It is 
extremely difficult for the investigator not uncon- 
sciously to betray his own assumptions so as to sug- 
gest certain types of reply. The result is that the 


is CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


investigator is more likely to get the information he 
is looking for than the objective data. Besides, the 
use of the questionnaire is limited to the upper age- . 
groups. In addition to being physically unable to 
record their experiences, children do not sufficiently 
understand their experiences to record them. This 
difficulty increases as the investigator approaches 
the early years until the method becomes wholly 
unusable. 

The personal interview is somewhat more reliable, 
since it gives opportunity for the investigator to ask 
questions and to follow up leads that appear promis- 
ing, as well as to verify reports concerning which he 
may be in doubt. But it also is subject to the limita- 
tions of a high degree of selection and suggestion, for 
the reasons outlined above, in addition to being 
limited to the higher age-groups. If the question- 
naire is used, it should be accompanied by the per- 
sonal interview, where possible. 

Introspection is of limited value for this purpose. 
Only persons of mature years can use it at all, 
and then only safely when they have had training 
in laboratory technic. This method becomes espe- 
cially misleading when an attempt is made on the 
part of the mature persons to recall the experiences 
of childhood. It invariably happens under these 
circumstances that childhood experiences are colored 
by the intervening experience, so that one reads back 
into the earlier experience meanings and motives 
that can only come with years of maturity. 

There is, however, an approach appropriate to 
persons of relatively mature years that uses one form 
of the introspective method—the personal diary. 
Where such diaries exist, especially if they have been 
written with another object in mind, they may well 


THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 183 


serve as an invaluable source of knowledge of expe- 
rience and particularly of the subjective elements 
that enter into it—what one thinks and how one 
feels about it. But here again the factor of selection 
is particularly operative, since very few people are 
given to keeping diaries, and these are likely to be per- 
sons who, in addition to having unusual experiences, 
are given to dwelling upon their subjective attitudes 
and interpretations. Consequently, the few diaries 
that are kept would furnish an utterly insufficient 
basis for an accurate and complete picture of normal 
experience among the many. 

The method upon which almost sole dependence 
must be placed is that of wide-spread objective re- 
cording of situations and responses. This method 
has the advantage of being appropriate for all ages, 
from the youngest child that is wholly unconscious 
of his acts or their meanings to the aged for whom 
experience is freighted with memory, insight, and 
reflection. If properly organized, research conducted 
on this basis will be unselective. It will furnish a 
body of data that can be dealt with according to 
reliable statistical procedure. It will have the ad- 
vantage of identifying specific situations with spe- 
cific responses, which furnishes the data most usable 
by modern psychological technic. It comes near- 
est to eliminating assumptions and interpretations 
that unconsciously tend to make the record an obser- 
vation of the observer rather than of the observed. 

The greatest care must be taken to see that the 
observations extend over the whole range of the 
learner’s experience. For this reason the observa- 
tions of the same children and young people should 
be made by different competent groups, such as 
parents, teachers in the secular school, teachers in 


184 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


the school of religion, playground supervisors, and 
librarians, as well as by special investigators. 

Another form of record that yields great promise 
in this field is that used with success by Professor 
W. W. Charters in his job-analysis technic. By this 
method some unit of experience is lifted out and 
carefully analyzed by a study of each activity in- 
volved. In this way an hour-by-hour analysis is 
made of the things done by a sales clerk, a private 
secretary, the manipulator of a machine, or an execu- 
tive, and the results recorded. A detailed record of 
the activities involved in any one of these occupa- 
tions is made the basis for technical training for that 
occupation. Just as the activities that are involved 
in the pursuit of a vocation are analyzed, so the home 
activities of the child may be broken up and analyzed 
into their constituent units. So also with secular 
school activities, playground activities, church ac- 
tivities, and the entire round of the learner’s expe- 
rience. 

In order to secure a dependable account of the 
experience of growing persons, three types of study 
need to be made. The first is a study of the ex- 
periences of homogeneous groups. Homogeneity is 
a necessary consideration, since experiences will fall 
into certain more or less definite types. The experi- 
ences of children and young people in a community 
composed entirely of native-born of native parents 
will differ very materially from the experiences of 
children of foreign-born parents in the Italian quarter 
or in the ghetto of a large city or of children of a 
mixed population where race contacts and frequently 
race conflicts are ever-present facts. The children 
of the poorer sections of a metropolitan centre will 
have decidedly different experiences from the chil- 


THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 185 


dren who live in the affluence of the avenues and the 
boulevards. Children who live in the open country 
will have widely different experiences from those 
who live in the crowded streets of urban centres. 
Homogeneity is of great educational significance, 
since within certain ranges of like-mindedness group 
education can be carried on successfully. If, how- 
ever, experience is too heterogeneous, it breaks up 
into more than one type or, worse still, shows no 
type at all. Where the range of heterogeneity is too 
great, there can be no group education. This con- 
sideration was much less important when the cur- 
riculum was thought of in terms of materials. But 
when experience is made the basis of the curriculum, 
there must be a sufficient basis of common experience 
if persons are to be taught together. 

Given homogeneity, there are distinct advantages 
to be derived from studies of groups. For one thing, 
they give a sufficiently broad basis for statistical 
treatment, which ceases to be reliable when the num- 
bers are small. Secondly, group data furnish under 
better conditions than are otherwise possible the two 
basic facts that are necessary for the conduct of edu- 
cation from any point of view, namely, resemblance 
and individual difference. The former furnishes the 
basis of the common elements of experience that are 
the prerequisites of like-mindedness, understanding, 
and co-operation; the latter provides for the unique 
elements in education that are essential for the devel- 
opment of originality and the particular qualities 
of individual persons. The chief danger to be guarded 
against in the study of groups is that the common 
elements of experience may obscure the individual 
elements, so that the selection of the experiences for 
curricular use will move on the dead level of averages. 


186 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


The second type of investigation is the intensive 
and continuous study of normal individuals. There 
are several unique advantages of this method. For 
one thing, the record will be much more inclusive 
and representative as far as the individual is con- 
cerned. It also gives a continuity of record that no 
other form of investigation can supply. By reason 
of this continuity of record it is possible to trace 
with much greater clearness the relation of ante- 
cedents and consequents in an unfolding experience. 
A much greater familiarity with the whole of the 
subject’s life makes it possible to take account of the 
accompanying and conditioning factors, such as back- 
grounds and temperament. In such studies it is also 
much easier to detect attitudes and motives than in 
cases where the contacts are less personal and con- 
tinuous. The thing to be guarded against in such in- 
vestigations is that the findings should be allowed to 
be unduly weighted on the personal side of experience 
as distinguished from its common aspect. This latter 
consideration, however, is considerably compensated 
for by the statistical fact that if the individual is 
normal his experience will, as the term suggests, be 
representative, when proper allowances are made for 
variation, of the group of which he is a member. In 
this way, if the person’s studies are selected for their 
representative qualities, the intensive study of types 
may yield more important results for the curriculum 
than any other type of approach. The continuous 
type consisting of the observation of growing per- 
sons is a long-time undertaking. It involves a faith- 
ful record covering many stages of personal develop- 
ment. It is the sort of recording that can probably 
best be done by intelligent parents who have such a 
keen appreciation of the value of such records as 


THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 187 


will keep them at the task over a long period of 
years. | 

A third type of investigation is the unrestricted, 
promiscuous type. The experiences that it records 
will be chosen without any reference to continuity, 
backgrounds, accompanying circumstances, or the 
membership of the subject in any group. Its method 
of sampling will be based wholly on chance. There 
are some distinct advantages in this approach. It 
very greatly broadens the base of observation. If the 
number of observations is sufficiently large it will 
tend to reveal the larger, more fundamental prob- 
lems that are common to persons living in different 
groups and under widely varying conditions. Its 
limitations are equally obvious. It is impossible in 
promiscuous observations to know the social and 
intellectual and cultural backgrounds of the person 
observed. It is equally impossible to form any judg- 
ment as to how far a response is modified by well- 
marked trends in disposition. It is next to impossible 
to be sure of any attitudes or motives that may enter 
into the response. It is impossible to trace the con- 
nections between antecedents and their consequents 
beyond a very narrow range. In this type of study 
the observation is practically limited to the situation 
and the response. And, considering the source of 
error that is present the moment the observer at- 
tempts to deal with attitudes and motives, there is 
something to be said for this procedure. 

It is clear that the most reliable results will be de- 
rived from the use of all three types of investigation. 
Each has its advantages and its limitations. The 
most satisfactory results will be obtained when each 
is used as a supplement to and check upon the other 
two. 


188 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


The foregoing considerations as to what consti- 
tutes the curriculum indicate the items for which 
investigation into the experience of growing persons 
should seek. 

First. It should secure an adequate listing and 
description of the situations which normal life pre- 
sents and the responses that persons make to them. 
The description should be accurate, inclusive of all 
the factors, and wholly objective. In recording a 
situation no attempt should be made by the observer 
to interpret it or to suggest an appropriate response. 
The observer should record accurately and fully the 
response made to the situation, without interpreta- 
tion or evaluation of the response. Where it is possi- 
ble, any delayed result of the experience should be 
recorded, though the observer should be careful that 
there is a sequential bond between the situation and 
the delayed result. 

The record of situations and their responses should 
include, as far as possible, the contributory factors, 
such as the home life of the subject, his school envi- 
ronment, his playground associates, and such other 
group relations as he may sustain. It should record 
his social, economic, racial, educational, and health 
conditions, together with any other factors that may 
have any bearing upon the situation. The record 
should take account of temperamental factors— 
whether the subject is active or passive, alert or list- 
less, quick or slow in his reactions, and whether his 
reactions are emotionally strong or weak. As far as 
possible, the record should take account of any ma- 
terial antecedent factors. These, together with the 
remote outcomes, take on increasing significance in 
view of the importance which modern psychology 
attaches to psychoanalysis. The outcome of some 


THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 189 


present experiences may have its explanation in 
some remote experience that has long remained hid- 
den in the depths of the subconscious. Here again, 
the observer should be on his guard against reading 
into the record his own interpretation. Particularly 
in such items, no matter what their laboratory value 
may be, the record should rigidly adhere to the prin- 
ciple of objectivity. 

Second. It should seek for central tendencies and 
individual differences. Under laboratory treatment 
it will be found that these data will conform to 
well-established statistical laws. In so far as the 
persons observed are normal and are members of 
homogeneous groups, their experiences will tend to 
cluster around certain well-defined types. This ten- 
dency will reveal the common elements in experience. 
Upon these common elements the procedure in deal- 
ing with groups must be based. On the other hand, 
their experiences will tend to scatter away from the 
central tendency. This will reveal the extent and the 
character of individual differences. Upon these differ- 
ences the flexibility of the curriculum will depend. 
The details of this item must be deferred until a later 
chapter. It must at least be recorded here as one of 
the primary items for which the research laboratory 
will seek. 

Third. The laboratory treatment of situations 
should disclose the possible alternatives in the out- 
comes of situations selected for curriculum use. The 
recorded outcomes themselves will afford a good be- 
ginning in this discovery. But the determination of 
outcomes will, on the whole, be the result of expert 
opinion. To the research expert, situations may hold 
out any number of possible outcomes that might not 
at all be apparent to the immature person actually 


199 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


making the response. The curriculum-builder will 
wish to know what the possible outcomes are, not 
only that they may be made apparent to the learner 
when these situations are set in the curriculum, but 
also in order that negative reactions may be had, 
when thought advisable, to undesirable outcomes as 
well as positive reactions to desirable outcomes. 
While, no doubt, the central emphasis should be 
placed upon the positive aspects of conduct, real 
life presents continual necessity of forming negative 
judgments and purposes. 

Fourth. The laboratory will need to determine 
what, on the whole, the Christian outcome would be 
in each of the selected situations. It is not intended 
to suggest that this can be done in anything like a 
fixed sense by one person for another. But in the 
greater number of the typical situations which actual 
life presents it is quite possible to determine the gen- 
eral outlines of what the Christian outcome should 
be. These outcomes would be determined chiefly by 
the consensus of expert opinion. That judgment, it 
is needless to remark, should rest upon the more evi- 
dent teachings of Jesus and his historic interpreters. 
Obviously, any attempt to formulate outcomes of 
situations will necessitate a complete shift from the 
theological to the practical point of view. The last 
thing which religious educators should wish to do 
would be to impose traditional theological dogmas 
upon growing persons. But to fit the ideals of Jesus 
as determinants into the practical conduct of life 
and to develop certain fundamental convictions is to 
rediscover the Christianity of Jesus as a way of life. 

Fifth. The statistical treatment of the data re- 
sulting from observation should reveal the specific 
points at which emphasis needs to be placed in re- 


THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 191 


ligious education. This should be determined by the 
principle of frequency. Two considerations emerge 
at this point. One is that, other things being equal, 
the frequency with which certain types of experience 
appear should determine the relative amount of time 
and energy that should be devoted to bringing those 
types of experience into clear understanding and 
under direction. The second is that the points at 
which the greatest difficulty appears or errors in 
judgment or choice occur most frequently should 
receive a proportionate amount of emphasis. The 
proper distribution of emphasis will result from the 
reconciliation of these two considerations. The fact 
that an experience appears with great frequency 
does not necessarily mean that it should receive a 
great amount of emphasis in the curriculum, if the 
choice is clear and likely usually to be rightly made. 
It is sufficient that such situations be raised clearly 
into consciousness, be reflected upon, and be re- 
sponded to in a Christian way, and then be reduced 
as quickly as possible to habit. If the response is 
rightly made, the frequency of the recurrence of the 
situation in experience will itself insure its permanent 
fixation in conduct. Not so with the difficult, unclear, 
or uncertain situations. These will need to be held in 
consciousness, repeatedly reflected upon, and re- 
sponded to until a reliable and permanent bond has 
been formed between the situation and a Christian 
response. 

Finally, the research laboratory will need to inves- 
tigate the whole range of historical subject-matter 
for suitable source materials to which the learner may 
go for the understanding and control of his expe- 
riences. ‘This will include not only biblical material, 
but materials from nature, literature, the sciences, 


192 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


social relations, history, art—in fact the whole sweep 
of the record of human experience. The experiences 
that he would interpret religiously are no longer ac- 
tivities limited to ecclesiastical occasions and insti- 
tutions; they are the experiences of his total, every- 
day life. For the understanding of these exneriences 
he will need all the light he can get from whatever 
source. But, of course, he will derive most assistance 
from those rich deposits of religious experience that 
he will find in the Bible, in the history of the King- 
dom of God, and in the rich biography of men and 
women in whose lives the spiritual values have been 
the deepest and most enduring realities. 

The curriculum itself will be most useful in that it 
will offer suggestions and stimulate the resourcefulness 
of both learner and teacher. The selection of situa- 
tions, source material, and approaches will be some- 
thing like a road map that will enable the learner and 
the teacher to get their bearings. The curriculum 
will serve its highest purpose if it helps the teacher 
to search out the learner’s own experiences and lift 
them up into the light of available sources and help 
him get the mastery over them. The danger is that 
teachers will take over suggestions that are intended 
to stimulate and guide and will use them as the older 
types of materials have been used—as more or less 
rigid and formal prescriptions. This danger can only 
be avoided by bringing teachers to a vital conception 
of the curriculum and by developing in them a technic 
for handling real life-situations through an adequate 
programme of teacher-training. What is here pro- 
posed is not that existing materials shall be made 
more interesting and vital by revamping the method 
of handling those materials. The problem cuts more 
deeply than that. Any improvement in method that 


THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 198 


would vitalize existing materials would, to be sure, 
be a definite gain. But what is here proposed is a 
complete shift in fundamental approach that calls 
for a fresh procedure in the selection and handling of 
materials. This procedure begins and ends in the 
experience of the learner. 


XI 
HISTORICAL SUBJECT—MATTER 


SUBJECT-MATTER, as we have seen under the discus- 
sion of what constitutes the curriculum, consists of 
three elements—the elements in the situation itself, 
the past experience of the learner, and the cumulative 
experience of the race. The last of these was desig- 
nated as historical subject-matter. The supreme 
emphasis that has been placed upon historical sub- 
ject-matter in traditional education, and the relative 
place of importance that it must occupy in any kind 
of educational procedure, require that 1t receive more 
detailed consideration. 

The essential character of historical subject-matter 
lies in the fact that it is a record of racial experience. 
At one time every bit of historical subject-matter 
belonged to the first or second elements in subject- 
matter; namely, to the factors in the situations them- 
selves or to the past experience of persons in respond- 
ing to those situations. Knowledge, however, that 
proved successful in the satisfactory completion of 
responses was seized upon, communicated to others, 
and handed down from one generation to another. 
At first these traditions were wholly oral; later, when 
writing was invented, they became permanent in the 
form of literary records. In time the invention of 
printing not only rendered these traditions perma- 
nent but increased their accuracy and facilitated 
their use on a wide-spread scale. It has been by the 
gradual process of accretion that the content of every 
one of the present bodies of science has been built up. 

194, 


HISTORICAL SUBJECT-MATTER 195 


Text-books on science are, in reality, note-books 
recording observations and experiments, with results 
and procedures. History is nothing more than a 
record of those significant experiences through which 
various human groups and the race itself have passed. 
Literature and art are the accumulated expression in 
forms of enduring beauty of the best that men have 
thought and felt. Philosophy is an articulate record 
of man’s intellectual struggle to find meaning and 
consistency in his world. Institutions are, for the 
most part, inarticulate records of social experiments 
in the conduct of life. 

It is this origin of knowledge that gives to it its 
value in helping persons or groups to understand 
their own experience and to gain control of it. The 
experience of the individual or the isolated group is 
too narrow to enable them to deal most successfully 
with the ever-new problems with which they are con- 
fronted. But when the problem of the individual 
or the group is held up in the light of the experience 
of other individuals or groups, the present problem 
lends itself much more easily to understanding and 
solution. A youth is much less likely to blunder in 
the solution of a problem that involves a moral issue 
if he is made aware by the experience of others of how 
different decisions have worked out and of the atti- 
tude of worthy men who have thought upon these 
outcomes and have expressed their judgment in the 
form of ideals and standards of conduct, just as a 
man is much less likely to go astray in his judgment 
on an economic issue if he is thoroughly familiar 
with the science of economics. For the same reason 
it is only when this racial knowledge is immersed in 
present experience that it proves effective in the 
enrichment and control of experience. As long as 


196 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


knowledge remains dissociated from actual life-situ- 
ations it tends to remain formal. It is when it 
enters into experience as understanding and control 
that it makes a difference in the conduct of life. A 
man may have a perfectly orthodox, catechetically 
derived doctrine that God is his father and all men 
are his brothers without its affecting in the remotest 
degree his practical relations with his fellow men in 
business, in industry, or in politics. But when the 
idea arises in his mind as a compelling conviction and 
becomes a working principle with him, it conditions 
and motivates all his relations with his fellow men. 
The form in which historical subject-matter exists 
varies in the greatest possible degree from the knowl- 
edge of current experience. The knowledge of current 
experience is genetic; that is, one experience leads 
immediately to another in such a way that the latter 
is a direct outcome of the former or is in some way im- 
mediately related to it. In this way the knowledge 
that is derived from current experience comes to the 
learner bit by bit im a series of sequences determined 
by the nature of the experience itself. The child’s 
knowledge of geography is normally the result of a 
process of discovery. It begins with the spot where 
he lives. I first expansion is out through the 
immediately surrounding neighborhood. Trips into 
the country bring him into contact with fields and 
woodlands and, perhaps, with small bodies of water. 
A railway journey may acquaint him with valleys, 
plains, and rivers. A vacation with his parents may 
acquaint him with the mountains or the sea. His 
reading may introduce him to distant parts of his 
own or other lands, as also may his interest in learn- 
ing the sources of the articles offered for sale in the 
stores of his community. But, whether by excursion 


HISTORICAL SUBJ ECT-MATTER 197 


or reading or inquiry into the sources of food and 
clothing or by interest in manners and customs, he 
comes upon his physical world bit by bit by a proc- 
ess of discovery. So also by a process of exploration 
he comes upon one aiter another of the facts of his 
natural world—the habits of pets, bird lore, the va- 
riations of plant life, the habits of insects. 

Historical subject-matter, on the contrary, exists 
in cumulative form. All the fragments of knowledge 
that have been abstracted from experience have been 
brought forward in a total and growing mass of 
knowledge. Through accretions it has grown from a 
meagre content to an immense volume. It is sym- 
bolized by the modern library where there is assem- 
bled in one place all that is known about the world in 
which we live, including ourselves. Rapid as has been 
the growth of knowledge in the past, it is overwhelm- 
ingly rapid under modern conditions. Into this store- 
house of knowledge there are constantly pouring 
streams of books and magazines that report the latest 
findings in science or the creations of literature and 
art. So great has become the accumulation of knowl- 
edge that it has become a hopeless undertaking for 
any one mind to attempt to master any considerable 
specialized field of it, to say nothing of the whole. 
To the immature learner this accumulated knowledge 
presents a bewildering mass. 

Historical subject-matter exists in systematized 
form. It is minutely classified under logical categor- 
ies, divisions, and subheads, so that it is possible to 
locate every fragment of human knowledge under its 
appropriate heading. This logical arrangement is 
symbolized by the organization of a modern library 
with its card index, its departments and subdivi- 
sions, in which each record of knowledge is easily 


198 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


accessible. Or it is like the department store which 
takes the articles of sale from the receiving depart- 
ment and distributes them according to floors, de- 
partments, aisles, and counters so that the floor- 
walker can easily and quickly direct the prospective 
purchaser to the specific article he wishes to find. 
Furthermore, historical subject-matter exists for 
the most part, in symbols. Some of this inheritance 
is preserved in monuments, like the pyramids of 
Egypt; some of it is embodied in works of art, like 
the Parthenon or the Greek pediments; some of it 
exists in institutions, like the English system of 
government; some of it consists In impressive and 
influential customs and ways of looking at things 
which are handed down as intangible possessions 
from generation to generation. But for the most part 
we are dependent upon written records for these 
treasures. Writing, as nothing else has done, has 
made possible a record of racial experience that is un- 
failing in its accuracy and permanency. For this rea- 
son the vastly greater portion of the knowledge that 
has descended from the past is accessible in books. 
It is out of the form in which historical subject- 
matter for the most part exists that there has arisen 
one of the most fundamental and difficult problems of 
education. The way in which the immature mind 
comes upon knowledge in experience and the way in 
which knowledge exists in books are utterly different. 
Knowledge for the learner arises out of experience as 
discovery; as a racial inheritance it is found in ac- 
cumulated and logical form in books. Education 
has properly shown its dependence upon these rich 
stores of racial knowledge. But it has historically 
been extremely difficult for education to recognize 
the knowledge of books for what it is—a faithful 


\ 


HISTORICAL SUBJECT-MATTER 199 


record of the experience of the past. The tendency 
has proven all but irresistible to substitute the record 
for the thing itself. It has happened repeatedly and 
consistently that educators have fallen into the view 
that it is the function of education to transmit these 
inheritances to the learner, or, as one of the foremost 
exponents of this view puts it, gradually to adjust 
those who are being educated to these spiritual inher- 
itances o the race. But this is precisely what the 
function of education in the highest sense should not 
be. Education should seek to adjust the immature 
to their material and social world by the aid of these 
inheritances from the past. Historical subject-matter 
is a means, not an end. 

The result. of substituting books for experience 
has uniformly been the removal of education from 
life and the consequent formalizing of learning into 
an institutional process of instruction. This lays 
upon the educator the problem of how to make and 
keep education a vital experience. This can only 
be accomplished successfully when the rich stores of 
historical subject-matter are thrown down into the 
forms of experience from which they arose; that is, 
when the approach to them has its origin in the vital 
experience of the learner and assumes the form of 
going to them as rich storehouses of source material 
for the interpretation and direction of present expe- 
rience. It should be understood that the problem is 
not one of vitalizing historical materials as materials. 
The entire point of view needs to be reconstructed so 
that its focus will rest, not upon materials of any 
sort whatsoever, but upon furthering the experience 
of the learner. When the shift of viewpoint has been 
wholly accomplished, the materials will be promptly 
and completely vitalized. 


200 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


Historical subject-matter varies in the greatest de- 
gree in educational value. It must, therefore, be se- 
lected with reference to its availability for educa- 
tional uses. 

The primary consideration that determines its edu- 
cational value, apart from its archeological interest 
as a record of the past, 1s the degree of correspondence 
between the experience of the past and present expe- 
rience. The psychological basis for this selective fac- 
tor was discussed in connection with the origin and 
function of knowledge. This means that experience 
is not valuable educationally just because it is 
experience. It must have arisen out of a situation 
that has common elements with the present situa- 
tion if it is to throw light upon the present situation 
and assist the learner in getting control of it. This 
criterion at once renders a considerable amount of 
human experience worthless except as a log of the 
human voyage. As such, no experience can cease to 
have value as a historical record of human thought, 
feeling, or achievement. And that, under certain 
circumstances, may be a perfectly good reason for 
becoming familiar with it. But the business of edu- 
cation is so pressing, the time is so limited, and the 
requirements of current experience are so exacting 
that it will be wiser to erect educational policies upon 
the use of those forms of past experience that are 
capable of furthering present experience. 

A second consideration consists in the fact that 
historical subject-matter varies in value in religious 
education according to the social, ethical, and spirit- 
ual levels upon which it orginated. While this is 
true of all historical subject-matter whatsoever, it 
is particularly true of those sources that are to be 
found in the literatures of the Hebrew and Chris- 


\ 


HISTORICAL SUBJECT-MATTER 201 


tian religions, since these literatures are preemi- 
nently the source materials for Christian education. 

The religion of the Old Testament passed through 
a long historical development. When the Hebrews 
began their career they were a nomadic tribal group 
passing through the characteristic kinship social 
organization. In no historical source material is there 
to be found a more perfect illustration of the tribal 
organization of society than among the early He- 
brews. In an unbroken historical sequence they 
passed through the nomadic stage of culture, through 
a period of migration and conquest, through a period 
of settlement upon a land whose people they had 
dispossessed, through the period of nation-building, 
and finally through the period of national disintegra- 
tion. In no religion whose literature affords a con- 
tinuous history of its development do we possess a 
more perfect record of the changes that came over 
its spiritual concepts and its ethical ideals through 
all these stages of national development than in the 
religion of the Hebrews. 

As the result of these changes in the economic and 
social functions of the nation there are present at the 
various levels of Old Testament religion widely vary- 
ing conceptions of God. During the nomadic life of 
the Hebrews, Jehovah was thought of as a tribal God, 
following the tribe as it moved from place to place 
in search of better pasturage and taking his place 
among the gods of other tribes, whose existence they 
never questioned. The extremely primitive concep- 
tion of God is naively reflected in the utter astonish- 
ment of Jacob that he should find Jehovah at distant 
Bethel as well as in Beer-sheba, the habitat of his 
tribe. During this period the Hebrews thought of 
Jehovah as possessing those attributes that fitted in 


202 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


with the life of a wandering and shepherd people. 
During the period of migration and conquest Jehovah 
assumed in their thought a militaristic character. It 
was during this time that he acquired the name “Je- 
hovah of Hosts,” meaning the God of the army in bat- 
tle. The Ark of the Covenant was carried into battle 
as a symbol of the presence of Jehovah. Campaigns 
were waged in his name and the spoils of victory de- 
voted to him. When the Hebrews settled on the land 
they had conquered, a profound change came over 
their conception of God. The thing happened with 
them that has always happened in the case of a con- 
quering people—the God of the victorious Hebrews 
assimilated the characteristics and functions of the 
deities of the dispossessed peoples. The God of the 
herdsmen and the God of battle now assumed the func- 
tions of agriculture and the vineyard. His functions 
as an agricultural deity are beautifully celebrated in 
the 65th Psalm. Numerous items in the ritual of 
worship had their origin in this period as others had 
their origin in the nomadic and militaristic periods. 
When, in the eighth century, the Hebrews were 
caught up in international relations that arose from 
their being situated between Babylonia and Egypt, 
the two dominant world powers, and became in- 
volved in their conflicts, the concept of God was 
universalized and ethicized and spiritualized. With 
the writing prophets God was the only true and 
living God and the God of the whole world, ruling 
in righteousness. In the period of national disin- 
tegration, when the political structure and the re- 
ligious cultus fell into ruins, the individual emerged 
in personal and responsible relations before God. 
The God of Jesus was a Heavenly Father in whom 
resided the loftiest qualities of ethical love. Out of 


HISTORICAL SUBJECT-MATTER 203 


this historic development emerges, for the religious 
educator, the problem: which of these changing and 
enlarging conceptions of God shall be made available 
to the immature learner of the Christian way of life? 
Shall it be the God of the nomadic tribe, the mili- 
taristic God of the conquering Hebrews, or the God 
of the prophets and of Jesus? Or shall he present 
them all in such a way that the historic process in 
the enlargement of the conception of God will be 
apparent ? 

The religious educator encounters the same kind 
of a problem when he undertakes to evaluate the 
ethical ideals of the Old Testament. The morality of 
the early Hebrews bore the unmistakable character- 
istics of tribal morality. It was at first customary and 
unreflecting. Moral obligations were binding within 
the kinship group; outside the group no obligations 
were recognized. Well on in their history polygamous 
domestic relations that would not be tolerated in a 
modern Christian community were accepted without 
protest or even comment. The ruthlessness with 
which the victorious Hebrews treated their van- 
quished enemies either by destroying the males and 
marrying the females or reducing them to the status 
of concubines or by enslaving the conquered, can be 
paralleled in the annals of militarism throughout all 
history. Some of the vindictive psalms manifest a 
spirit of revenge that Jesus explicitly and emphati- 
cally condemned. Jesus Himself was very careful to 
discriminate between these ethical standards of the 
older and of the newer order. The religious educator 
dare not be less discriminating. What shall be his 
attitude toward these obsolete ethical standards? 
Shall they be presented to the immature mind at all? 
If they are presented, shall it be m order to secure 


204 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


negative reactions to them? Or shall it be in order 
to convey to the learner the lifting of Christian 
standards of conduct away from these more primitive 
levels? 

What has been said concerning the various levels 
of spiritual ideas and ethical ideals is equally applica- 
ble to the differing spiritual outlook of certain por- 
tions of the Old Testament. The narrow nationalism, 
the selfish exclusiveness, and the haughty superiority 
of the Hebrew contrast in the most striking manner 
with the universal spirit of the author of the Book of 
Jonah and the loving and serving outlook of Jesus 
upon the whole life of mankind. In these days of 
expanded human relationships that call for the 
widening outlook, the deepening of understanding 
and brotherly sympathy, and the humanizing of in- 
ternational relations it ought not to be difficult to 
determine the relative value of these types of source 
material for religious educational use. 

A third consideration lies in the fact that the 
religious ideas, the ethical ideals, and the spirit- 
ual outlook of source material must be evaluated 
with reference to the needs of the type of social 
organization they are intended to serve. This also 
is true in a particular sense of biblical sources. 
The religious ideas and ethical ideals of a primitive 
tribal folk or of a militaristic autocracy are scarcely 
suitable for the spiritualization and motivation of a 
society that is in process of being organized upon a 
democratic basis. Democracy calls for different 
mental patterns. Equally important for the modern 
mind is the emergence on so large a scale of in- 
ternational relations and common interests that 
cut straight across the older national and racial 
boundaries. Society is daily presenting new sets of 


HISTORICAL SUBJECT-MATTER 205 


relations and problems that arise out of these en- 
larged relations. They call for the reorganization of 
loyalties by which the smaller and secondary loyal- 
ties that united men into smaller conflicting groups 
shall give place to the larger and more fundamental 
loyalties that unite men into comprehensive groups 
that are capable of mutual understanding and co- 
operation in the interest of the highest ends of social 
living on a world scale. New forms of sin that were 
never dreamed of in the relatively simple pastoral 
life of ancient Israel have emerged in the new social 
situations and interracial and international relations 
of human groups. The industrialization of society, 
the socialization of practically every aspect of human 
life, the drag of materialistic achievement and technic 
upon spiritual. ideals, the frightful and staggering 
problem of war—these are some of the unspeakably 
larger demands that modern society is making upon 
religious concepts and spiritual ideals. A religious 
education that will function in the life of modern 
man must be thought through in terms of these 
larger and more intricate social situations. Nothing 
short of the universal outlook, the lofty spiritual 
idealism, and the searching ethics of Jesus and the 
prophets can effectively set religion as a dynamic 
force in the midst of modern life. 

It is true that the mere fact of historic development 
in the content and outreach of religious experience 
has very great educative value. But in the use of 
these materials it must be made clear to the learner 
that there has been this ethical and spiritual advance 
from the lower toward the higher religious levels. 
One of the things to be avoided in religious education 
is a static view of religious experience. The clear 
conviction that God has been creating the higher 


206 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


values of life in and through the experience of men is 
one of the chief ways of arriving at a vital under- 
standing of God and of opening up the unlimited 
possibilities of religious experience in and through 
which God is still working. 

The supreme criterion for the evaluation of all 
historical subject-matter in religious education is 
the degree in which it approximates the mind of 
Jesus and furthers the progressive realization of the 
ideals of the Kingdom of God in the larger and more 
difficult human situations of our times. The expe- 
rience of Jesus represents the highest reach of the 
spirit in its attainment of ethical, social, and religious 
values. It may, therefore, be accepted as the norm 
of religious experience in those who are committed 
to the Christian way of life. He lived His life on the 
basis of certain assumptions. These were not only 
valid for His own experience; they are valid for all 
who would live as He lived. That historical subject- 
matter, therefore, is of the highest value that helps 
the learner to discover the assumptions and convic- 
tions upon which He lived His life and did His work, 
His interpretations of the relations and functions of 
life, and the motives that impelled Him to action. 
Next in value to that which enables the learner to 
discover the mind of Jesus in relation to the funda- 
mental problems of life is that which records those 
adventures in living that have been made by men 
who have acted upon motives and convictions that 
approximated those upon which He grounded His 
career. Valuable as is the record of religious experi- 
ence of any sort whatever, it is its approximation to 
the experience of Jesus that gives it its distinctively 
Christian quality. 


XIV 
METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE 


WHEN the curriculum is conceived in terms of en- 
riched and controlled experience the traditional 
sharp distinction between subject-matter and method 
tends to become indistinct and entirely to disappear. 
To be sure, subject-matter and method continue to 
remain distinguishable in thought; in practice they 
merge into different aspects of the same situation- 
response process. Each becomes meaningless and 
insignificant without the other. Subject-matter and 
method are inseparable. 

Method is determined by the relation of knowledge 
to experience. Under the discussion of the origin 
and function of knowledge we discovered that there 
are two aspects to that relation. On the one hand, 
knowledge arises as meaning out of experience. It 
is from that source that all the great bodies of his- 
torical subject-matter have come. On the other 
hand, knowledge re-enters experience as a factor of 
control. It is through the use of knowledge as an in- 
strument of interpretation and control that the indi- 
vidual or the group comes to understand experience 
and seize upon the factors that direct it. That is to 
say, method is determined by the manner in which 
persons meet and respond to situations. Since these 
two processes have been before us in detail as proc- 
esses it remains only to point out in this connection 
their evident implications for method in the practice 
of education. 

When the viewpoint regarding the curriculum is 
shifted from materials to be taught to the experience 

207 


208 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


of the learner that is to be brought under his own 
conscious direction, the traditional “steps” in teach- 
ing immediately undergo a complete reconstruction. 

The ‘“‘five formal steps in teaching” that were 
elaborated by the Herbartians rested upon a three- 
fold point of view. They were designed for use in 
transmitting effectively the accumulated knowledge 
of the past. As a consequence, they had their be- 
ginning and end in subject-matter, and subject- 
matter of a particular sort—historical subject-matter. 
As a corollary of this first consideration, they were 
designed primarily for the use of the teacher, not for 
the learner. Furthermore, and in conformity with 
both of these considerations, they were designed for 
the guidance of a process that was authoritative and 
entirely external to the learner. The theory that was 
back of the procedure was that the mind of the 
learner was being “formed” by forces and processes 
entirely outside himself and in which he had no part. 
Under this approach the initiative lay wholly with 
the instructor. Objectives were set for the learner, 
materials were selected entirely without reference to 
his choice, and responsibility rested in other hands 
than his. His part in the whole procedure was a 
passive and memoriter response. 

The “five formal steps’? that grew out of these 
viewpoints determined the traditional procedure in 
instruction. They were: (1) preparation, by which 
the instructor called up knowledge already present in 
the mind of the learner as an apperceptive basis for 
the new knowledge; (2) presentation, by which 
the instructor presented the new knowledge in a clear 
and impressive manner; (3) assimilation, by which 
the new knowledge was interrelated with the other 
bodies of knowledge already present in the mind; (4) 


METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE 209 


generalization, by which the learner was led to form 
accurate concepts and attach correct definitions to 
them; and (5) application, by which the newly 
acquired knowledge was applied in new situations. 
This last step is the basis for the slogan of the older 
methodologist, ““No impression without expression.” 
It is the basis for the so-called “‘expressional work”’ 
that has been and is now so widely used in religious 
education. 

This Herbartian methodology has dominated for 
a long time, and still dominates, the practice of edu- 
cation, both secular and religious. Around it has 
been developed a technic of teaching that has been 
unusually successful in imparting knowledge. Around 
it has grown up a standardized type of school archi- 
tecture with its desk for the teacher, who presides in 
authority over the classroom, and its formal rows 
of seats in which pupils learn their lessons and from 
which they recite back to the teacher. 

When the focus of attention is shifted to the re- 
direction of experience, the Herbartian methodology 
becomes practically useless. Dealing at first hand 
with experience requires that a new set of “‘steps”’ be 
formulated. The assumptions and viewpoint that 
govern the nature and order of these steps have been 
set forth in the discussions in the foregoing chapters. 
These steps rest upon the nature of experience and the 
technic of its control. When these findings are trans- 
lated into procedure they yield the following steps: (1) 
the analysis of the situation which confronts the learn- 
er, with a view to discovering its essential elements; 
(2) a search for the possible outcomes of the response, 
with an evaluation of each outcome; (8) a search of 
the past experience of the learner for the ideas, atti- 
tudes, ideals, and habits that have any bearing upon 


210 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


the present situation; (4) a search of historical sub- 
ject-matter for the experience of others that is 
capable of throwing any light upon the present situa- 
tion; (5) a choice of the outcome that is in accord 
with the best ideals of the person and of the race; 
(6) the actual trying out of the chosen outcome; (7) 
the reduction of the chosen outcome to a dependable 
habit. These steps have yet to acquire a smooth 
technic and to build around themselves a school or- 
ganization, including a physical plant, within which 
the management of actual life experience can go on 
effectively. 

When related to experience, the distinction be- 
tween “‘general’’ method and “special”? method 
tends to disappear. The steps just outlined con- 
stitute the fundamental procedure in dealing with 
all types of situations. They also furnish the technic 
of approach to any particular situation. The unique 
quality of the response to any given situation will 
depend upon the factors involved in the situation, 
the number and character of possible outcomes, the 
unique elements in the past experience of the learner 
as respects knowledge, attitudes, and ideals, the avail- 
able source materials in historical subject-matter, 
and the approach, resourcefulness, and skill of the 
learner in executing each of these steps. 

Thus method may be said to consist of a widening 
experience in meeting and responding to situations. 
Perfection in the use of method will come only 
through an increasing mastery of the technic of 
breaking situations up into their factors, of seizing 
upon the essential elements, of suggesting outcomes 
and subjecting them to criticism and evaluation, of 
making intelligent choices, and of carrying out pur- 
poses to their consummation. It follows also that 


METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE 211 


this mastery will best be attained through dealing, 
not with more or less fictitious situations that are 
lifted out of real life and set down im a formal insti- 
tution, but with the actual situations that real life 
presents in the concrete connections i which they 
normally occur. 

When the curriculum is conceived in terms of con- 
trolled experience, there arises, however, a sharp dis- 
tinction between the method of the learner and the 
method of the teacher. For the learner, method con- 
sists in acquiring skill through widening experience 
in meeting and responding to situations. The outlook 
of the learner, especially in the earlier stages of the 
learning process, is quite narrowly limited to situa- 
tions that are more or less immediate and gripping 
because their worth is apparent to him. For the 
teacher, on the contrary, method consists in assist- 
ing the learner to make his responses wisely and 
effectively. It is the function of the teacher to see! 
that the learner does not overlook important factors | 
in the analysis of the situation, to help him exhaust ° 
the possible outcomes, to help him search his own | 
experience for light, to direct him to the most sig- ) 
nificant source materials that will help him in the’ 
solution of his problem, and to encourage him to— 
persevere in the face of all obstacles and distractions © 
until he has accomplished his chosen end. The out- 
look of the teacher is over a much longer span of time. 
He has in mind the whole learning process and sees, 
in a rough way, the end from the begining. He is 
constantly mindful of the final and total outcome of 
the immediate experiences. These ultimate goals are 
to him the most important, though in his emphasis 
upon these in his own mind he does not minimize the 


immediate ends that bulk so large in the thinking 


212 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


of the learner. Standing midway in the process, the 
teacher sees the direction in which experience is mov- 
ing. 

The difference between pupil experience and 
teacher experience may be illustrated in the case of 
a person learning to adjust himself in a Christian way 
to the member of another, let us say the colored, 
race. The problem which the situation presents is 
this: what attitude shall the learner, as a Christian, 
assume toward this particular colored person and 
toward the colored race in general? 

The first step for the learner in solving this problem 
is to analyze, as far as he may be able, the situation 
into its constituent elements. When he does so, he 
finds himself a member of a developed and favored 
race. He finds that this person to whom he must ad- 
just himself in play, in the schoolroom, on the street, 
or in an occupation has a different color of skin, 
different shape of head, different physiognomy, dif- 
ferent dialect, and different cultural backgrounds 
and ideas. Moreover, the person to whom he must 
adjust himself is a member of a race that his own 
race for the most part looks down upon as an inferior 
race. If he mingles freely with colored persons he is 
made to feel the disapprobation of his own race. 
This general social disapproval is registered by ex- 
cluding the colored person from hotels, forcing him 
to ride in separate compartments in public convey- 
ances, frowning upon his taking a seat in a public 
assembly where the privileged race is present except 
it be in a restricted section, depriving him on one 
ground or another of the power of the ballot, or sub- 
jecting him to various forms of economic discrimi- 
nation. And yet itis apparent that this member of 
the “inferior” race is a person and is living out his 


METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE ~ 218 


life ina democratic society that has accepted, in 
theory at least, as its fundamental ideals equality 
of opportunity, privilege, and responsibility within 
the limits of each person’s capacity. 

When he turns his attention from the analysis of 
the situation to the possible outcomes of his own 
conduct, several courses of action suggest themselves. 
He may assume an attitude of hatred toward the 
negro. Or he may treat him with irritated or pitying 
contempt. Or he may ignore his presence and seek 
in every way to shunt the problem on one side or de- 
lay it by avoiding all contacts. Or he may assume 
an attitude of respect toward the negro as a person 
whose personality is sacred, and seek in every way to 
assist his less privileged fellow citizen to find an un- 
obstructed opportunity to live out his life in the 
circumstances in which he finds himself, in the spirit 
of justice, brotherhood, and mutual good-will. 

When he turns from the situation to his own past 
experience the learner will find his attitude condi- 
tioned by many considerations. The section of the 
country in which he has been reared will have much 
to do with shaping his personal attitude as being 
friendly and helpful or indifferent or antagonistic. 
lf his family belonged to the Abolitionists, and espe- 
cially if they helped to conduct an “underground 
railway”? for the escape of negroes from the South 
during the Civil War, or if his ancestors fought in 
the Civil War with the idea that they were fighting 
to liberate the slaves, his attitude is likely to be 
friendly and helpful, even to the point of idealizing 
the negro. If, on the other hand, he chances to live 
in a section of the country where the colored popula- 
tion outnumbers the white and where there has been 
continual race antagonism, he is more than likely to 


214 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


assume a condescending or antagonistic attitude, 
holding to the accepted idea that the colored race 
should “be taught to know its place and keep it.” 
Whether he has been reared in the North or the 
South, if he has been reared under highly social and 
Christian influences, if he has been accustomed to 
hearing the race problem discussed from a social 
and a Christian point of view, he is likely to assume 
the attitude of wishing to understand the conditions 
under which the negro lives, of respecting him, and of 
endeavoring to assist him toward a more satisfactory 
situation as he himself would wish to be understood 
and assisted were he in the negro’s place. 

In his effort to understand his problem he will 
take the third step—a search through available his- 
torical source material for a full and accurate knowl- 
edge of the facts involved. He will consult history 
and learn that the negro did not come to America on 
his own initiative, but was herded here against his 
will in slave ships to do the menial tasks of a power- 
ful and dominant race. He will consult biology and 
anthropology and learn that all races, his own in- 
cluded, sprang from one original stock and were dif- 
ferentiated into the several races under the modify- 
ing influence of different environments in which they 
have lived for millenniums. He will discover that the 
criteria of race, such as cephalic index, physiognomy, 
color of skin and hair, shape of the hair, and stature, 
are only superficial characteristics and probably do 
not radically affect essential human nature. He will 
discover [that language and culture are simply ac- 
cumulations of customs, habits, and ways of look- 
ing at things. He will consult psychology and find 
that mental capacity differs much less widely among 
races than is commonly supposed, a few authorities 


METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE 215 


to the contrary notwithstanding, and that when 
allowance is made for status and previous experience 
there may be no essential differences at all. He will 
search the social sciences and find that all races 
normally pass through a process of development and 
that society is now experimenting with a democratic 
form of social living that involves the sacredness of 
all persons, the equal opportunity for all to make the 
most of themselves within the limits of their capacity, 
and a shared responsibility for the welfare of the 
whole. He will see that in such a society the presence 
of an underprivileged race without opportunity or a 
sense of social responsibility is a source of injustice 
to the underprivileged race and a menace to the 
entire social order. As a Christian he will search the 
teachings of Jesus for His declarations and assump- 
tions on the worth of persons, the relation of persons 
to each other as respects justice, co-operation, and 
service in the interests of a Christian society. 

With this ampler knowledge the learner will choose 
the outcome that seems to him to be Christian and 
will proceed to carry out his conclusions in practical 
courses of action, thus completing the steps involved 
in this particular piece of learning. 

It is when viewed in contrast with this experience 
of the learner that the experience of the teacher be- 
comes clear. The function of the teacher consists in 
assisting the learner so to analyze his situation that 
he will not overlook any material factors, to stimu- 
late him by suggestion to exhaust the possible out- 
comes in conduct, to search and criticise his own past 
experience with a view to discovering what light it is 
capable of throwing upon the present situation, and 
to help him to discover the significant sources of 
historical subject-matter in the experience of others 


216 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


that will afford him adequate understanding of the 
problem involved. The danger in the case of the 
immature learner is that he will overlook or misin- 
terpret significant factors in the situation, that he 
will not feel or properly understand the problem 
that the situation presents, that he will not suffi- 
ciently criticise and check his own past experience, or 
that he will act with imperfect knowledge of what 
others have discovered, thought, felt, or done with 
respect to this particular problem. 

Thus, for example, as is very likely to happen in 
the case of the adjustment of a member of one race 
to a member of another race, especially to a member 
of the colored race, it is quite possible that it may 
not occur to the learner to see in this colored alien a 
person, with feelings, aspirations, and a destiny like 
his own. He might easily overlook the fact that the 
criteria of race are, after all, only superficial differ- 
ences. Without guidance it might quite escape him 
that the concept of democracy is involved in this 
particular problem. 

When it comes to the analysis of outcomes, without 
stimulation or suggestion, his failure to perceive all 
the elements that are involved'in the situation or his 
prejudices might easily prevent him from seeing more 
than one or two outcomes. Least of all might it occur 
to him to admit the colored person to his feelings of 
brotherhood and justice or to entertain a sense of 
helpfulness on his part. 

The teacher will be of great assistance in helping 
the learner to manage his own past experience. He 
will warn him against sectional feeling or race preju- 
dice. He will point out to him the influence which 
social and economic status have upon one’s thinking. 
He will help him to understand and appreciate the 


METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE 217 


colored man’s place by understanding the conditions 
under which he lives, the sense of humiliation caused 
by status, and his sense of injustice at finding one 
after another of the doors of opportunity swing shut 
against him, as well as help him to put himself in the 
other’s place. 

In dealing with source materials, the teacher will 
assist the learner by making their existence known 
to the learner, by pointing out to him where they 
may be found, and by helping him to come into pos- 
session of all the facts available. He will help him 
to discover social experiments in dealing with the 
race problem and their outcomes and will stimulate 
in him the desire to know the best that the most 
socially and Christian minded leaders of both races 
have thought on the problem. He will stimulate 
the learner to inquire into the social and economic 
backgrounds out of which have emerged the dis- 
crimination and disapproval that he is made to feel. 
The function of guidance will be to help the learner 
to take a factual] attitude toward his problem, to 
criticise his own attitudes and viewpoints and those 
of society as well, to act in the light of full knowledge, 
and to accept responsibility for his decisions, once 
they have been reached. Not least of the services 
the teacher will render the learner will be to help 
him carry out to its complete issue the decision he 
has reached in the light of full and unprejudiced 
knowledge, to point out sources of danger or difficulty 
in the course of the experiment, to help the learner to 
understand the causes of defeat and to help him keep 
his purpose from lagging until it is carried through. 

Throughout this relation of pupil experience to 
teacher experience the function of the teacher will 
be that of a companion, counsellor, and guide. | His 


218 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


task is to help the learner to arrive at Christian out- 
comes in a free experience that is moving forward in 
a developing world. His greatest problem is, on the 
one hand, to supply that counsel and guidance with- 
out violating the freedom of the learner’s experience 
and, on the other hand, to make available to the 
learner the significant experience of the past without 
closing the experience of the learner to the new ave- 
nues and qualities of experience that have not yet 
appeared. As the representative of adult society, the 
teacher may not impose his authority, sanctioned by 
social pressure and tradition, upon the learner, who 
stands as the representative of the future, which holds 
within itself, yet to be revealed, those fresh and 
original elements of experience that will make it dif- 
ferent from that which has gone before. Neither may 
he, because he has superior knowledge and a better 
understanding of how experience may be controlled, 
withhold material aspects of the situations that life 
presents so that the learner may respond only to 
manipulated and loaded situations. Neither may he 
manipulate the response by withholding material 
knowledge so that the learner’s choices are made in 
the light of partial and selected facts in the interest 
of maintaining class status or traditional points of 
view. The learner, as the representative of the future, 
has a right to see life whole and in all its aspects 
and to possess all the facts without manipulation. 
Neither has the teacher the right, because of his 
knowledge of the laws of response, to take advantage 
of the learner by fixing upon him rigid habits that 
the learner himself does not approve. To violate 
these fundamental necessities of free experience is to 
make education propaganda in behalf of class inter- 
ests or points of view or an instrument for keeping 


METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE ~ 219 


things as they are—the dead hand of the past upon 
present and future. 

How to guarantee Christian outcomes for a free 
experience in a moving world is an extremely delicate 
and difficult problem. Perhaps there can be no cer- 
tain guarantee. Obviously, as has been pointed out 
elsewhere in this discussion, the approach must be 
through understanding, the sharing of points of view 
and purposes, and a sense of responsibility for an un- 
finished undertaking. The adult generation may not 
do less than to see to it that the oncoming generation 
is initiated into the ideals, objectives, and methods 
of the Kingdom of God as these emerge from the 
past, with sympathy and understanding. Beyond 
that point the present generation must trust the 
future generation to work out its problems in perfect 
freedom. Once the teacher, who represents the past, 
has placed the learner, who represents the unexplored 
future, in possession of all the facts and helped him to 
think through and around his problem, the teacher 
must respect the judgment and choice of the learner 
as a trustworthy basis for future action. The guaran- 
tee that the learner will not ruthlessly break with 
the ideals and purposes of the past will have to be 
sought in his being led to understand that the 
present is the outgrowth of the past through a 
historical process of antecedent and consequent and 
that the present will sustain precisely the same rela- 
tion to the future as the past sustains to the present. 
A clear preception of this continuity, an understand- 
ing and appreciation of objectives, and a sense of 
responsibility can be trusted as far as any sanction 
can be trusted to evoke what the learner judges, from 
his point of view, to be a Christian response. And if 
we remind ourselves of the risk m this procedure that 


220 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


arises from the learner making his own choices, we 
must also remind ourselves that there can be neither 
freedom nor progress without just this risk. Even 
so trustworthy a generation as our own may have 
made mistakes ! 

The procedure of the classroom is not less affected 
by this conception of method. The whole attitude 
and atmosphere of the class meeting is changed. 
Recitations are no longer conducted by the teacher. 
The recitation is based upon assignments from text- 
books and collateral readings or upon lectures. These 
bodies of material the learner is expected to master ° 
and repeat back to the teacher with varying degrees 
of accuracy or completeness, the remainder of the 
class remaining the while more or less interested spec- 
tators. Under skillful teachers the interest of the 
other members of the class may be kept taut by a 
skillful use of the order and method of questioning 
or by requiring the residue of the pupils to supple- 
ment or correct incomplete or imaccurate answers. 
But at best the fundamental alignment of the recita- 
tion follows the teacher-reciter pattern, in which for 
the moment the individual emerges from the group 
in an attitude of responsibility to an authoritative 
teacher. While this teacher-reciter relation is sus- 
tained, the attitude of the other members of the class 
toward the reciter is critical, competitive, and, all too 
frequently, unsocial. Under these conditions assist- 
ance of any sort is dishonest and dishonorable, not- 
withstanding the fact that in real life co-operation 
and helpfulness are set forth as Christian virtues of 
the highest order. Under the procedure of the recita- 
tion, the class can only in the most limited sense be- 
come a social group. The whole psychological situa- 
tion is in the direction of making and keeping the 


METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE — 221 


class an aggregation of individuals in competition 
with each other. In such a situation, only in the 
most limited sense can there arise a sense of social 
solidarity and a sense of social responsibility among 
the various members of the group itself. 

But when method is shifted from materials to 
experience, expecially to significant social experience, 
the class session becomes a meeting of like-minded 
persons for the carrying forward of worthful enter- 
prises or the conducting of experiments or the under- 
taking of lines of investigation. The physical pattern 
of the room is changed. Instead of the teacher’s desk 
and the formal rows of seats, the room assumes the 
character of a laboratory or a conference room, ac- 
cording to the enterprise that is under way. If an 
experiment is being conducted, there may be work- 
tables, files, materials, unfinished pieces of work. 
If an investigation is being conducted in one of the 
major fields of human experience, the room may have 
its conference table, around which the members of 
the group gather, after the pattern of the directors’ 
room of a corporation or of a committee room. The 
fundamental alignment of the group will follow a 
person-person pattern that will bind all the members 
of the company into a coherent, co-operating social 
group. The basic sense of responsibility is to the 
social group rather than to any isolated individual. 
The bond is social and human, not authoritative. 
The relation of the members of the group is a give- 
and-take relation. 

The position of the teacher in this group is that of 
a responsible member of the group. Responsibility 
centres in the group itself. The teacher has only such 
influence in determining policies and procedures as 
his personality, experience, maturity, and superior 


222 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


knowledge and skill may justify. His function is to 
counsel the group so that its efforts will be expended 
in worth-while undertakings, so that its progress will 
be cumulative, and so that it will arrive at some clear 
and complete goal. His status in the group will be 
determined by the quality and amount of service he 
ean render. The status of every other member will 
be determined in precisely the same way. 

Self-determination within the group itself is the 
only way in which responsible self-control in the di- 
rection of experience can be acquired. To be sure, 
the degree to which complete self-direction is shifted 
to the learners must depend upon maturity and ex- 
perience of the learners. The shift must be a progres- 
sive shift. Immature persons do not yet possess 
enough capacity or experience safely to be intrusted 
with so much responsibility. But, beginning with so 
much of self-direction as children can safely assume, 
there should be a progressive shifting of direction to 
the learners themselves until complete self-direction 
is possible. Neither can this self-determination be a 
fictitious make-believe. It must be genuine, and the 
learners must understand it to be genuine. Matters 
to be decided upon should be submitted for discus- 
sion and a consensus of judgment arrived at. If 
they are to be real, decisions arrived at in this way 
must affect the actual conduct of the affairs of the 
group. 

The following may be considered an example of 
the form which a class meeting may assume. Hav- 
ing blocked out the main outlines of the major prob- 
lems involved in the understanding of a selected 
field of experience, the first step in classroom proce- 
dure may well take the form of laying out one of the 
major lines of investigation to be pursued by the 


METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE —§ 223 


group. This process will consist in thinking through 
the problem and determining the specific constituent 
elements that enter into it. 

After laying out the lines of investigation, the 
group will adjourn to the library or such other sources 
of information as may be accessible. The teacher 
will have suggested significant sources from which 
knowledge may be secured. These suggestions will 
differ as widely as possible from assignments. They 
will have to do with sources and then will be only 
suggestive. They will only be useful to the student 
in stimulating him and in giving him some direction 
in locating and using relevant source materials. 
They will accustom him to the use of sources in the 
way in which he will need to use them when he has no 
experienced counsellor to guide him in his search. 
It will be better if they are not exhaustive, so that 
the student himself may discover other seurces and 
add them to the list of the group. They will not be 
specific in length; the student will need to acquire the 
attitude of pursuing his sources as far as is necessary 
to give him possession of the data he needs and the 
varying points of view of those who have dealt with 
the data. 

After the search of sources has been made, the 
group will reassemble to bring its findings together. 
These will be reported in the class meeting. Each 
student becomes an investigator and a reporter of 
findings. If one investigator has erred in his choice 
of data or has arrived at a wrong interpretation of 
their meaning, the other members of the group will 
check his error. If he has failed in the discovery of 
significant data, the other members of the group will 
supply them. These individual findings will be worked 
through a welter of free discussions until a collective 


224 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


judgment is arrived at. In discussion there should be 
the utmost freedom for the expression of personal 
judgments, as there should be developed a corre- 
sponding attitude of critical analysis of every posi- 
tion that is advanced. Those who advance opinions 
should be expected to sustain them with adequate 
reasons. Reported points of view should be assigned 
to their authors and the essential points of difference 
made clear, with evaluations. 

The collective findings of the group may well be 
recorded. The record should be made by one of the 
members of the group for a particular line of investi- 
gation. The record should include not only the find- 
ings but the significant movement of the discus- 
sion and the basis upon which the findings rest. It 
should record significant positions that were ad- 
vanced and held by individuals in the group whom 
the discussion failed to convince. It will be well if 
the findings are read at a subsequent meeting of the 
group after an interval of time has elapsed, and 
adopted as the responsible findings of the body after 
such amendments have been made as will make the 
report an accurate record. These findings should be 
preserved in a permanent record that will represent 
the finished work of the group. 

It is only in some such situation as this that there 
can be developed those attitudes of mind that are 
the absolute prerequisites of the intelligent manage- 
ment of experience. In this sort of an atmosphere 
initiative can be developed. The emphasis is shifted 
to thinking as the heart and centre of the technic of 
control, rather than memory. Memory does not 
suffer from this replacement of emphasis. Facts that 
are mastered in vital situations are more permanent 
possessions of the mind than those that are acquired 


METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE = 225 


through formal drill. One of the most invaluable 
gains of such a procedure is the acquiring of an 
ability to do co-operative thinking in the pursuit of 
common purposes. This is the sort of situation within 
which the responsible mind can be developed, a mind 
that is willing to assume initiative and to abide by 
the consequences of its thinking and decisions. Above 
all, it is the situation within which the active quali- 
ties of mind emerge—the dynamic mind that passes 
beyond the limits of appreciation and assimilation 
and rises to the creative level. Upon such a type of 
mind the progressive realization of the Kingdom of 
God depends. 


XV 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION THROUGH SOCIAL 
PARTICIPATION 


In the same way that subject-matter is inseparable 
from method it is inseparable from the organization 
of the school. 

Subject-matter, as we have seen, is inseparable 
from situations. It consists, in part, of the elements 
that make up the situation itself; it consists, in part, 
of the products of responses to former situations that 
are capable of assisting the learner in responding to 
the present situation. Subject-matter could not arise, 
therefore, except as meaning out of situations; situa- 
tions, in turn, would remain unintelligible apart from 
subject-matter. 

The school is a selective and controlled environ- 
ment in which education is going forward. Were it 
not for the school, experience would remain for the 
most part haphazard and aimless. The school 
makes it possible to select out of real life those situa- 
tions that are educationally resourceful, to arrange 
them in a proper sequence with reference to approved 
objectives, and to assist the learner in a systematic 
manner in mastering the technic of responding to 
these situations in intelligent, purposeful, moral, and 
spiritual ways. 

Because subject-matter, method, and organization 
are inseparable, not only does the organization of the 
school take on fundamental educational significance, 
but it is at once apparent that the character of the 
organization is profoundly involved. It is the clear 

226 


SOCIAL PARTICIPATION 227 


implication of the foregoing discussion that the school 
must be a community of persons in which actual and 
significant experience is going forward. In education 
of any kind the school must be a miniature society in 
which are not only included, but made obvious, the 
typical relations, functions, and responsibilities of 
the larger social group. In religious education this 
means that the school of religion should be a minia- 
ture religious society organized on the basis of the 
fundamental ideals, purposes, and motives of the 
Kingdom of God. 

The organization of the school of religion as a re- 
ligious community rests upon four fundamental 
considerations. 

The first is the social nature of the learning process. 
Knowledge, as we have already seen, is primarily a 
social creation. In its cumulative form it is the result 
of the co-operation not only of many persons living 
together in a social situation, but of many genera- 
tions, each adding its increment to the growing mass. 
It is in this way that every science has grown up. 
One’s ideas, attitudes, and beliefs are not so much the 
result of his own original and critical thinking as 
they are the result of his having been born into a 
social inheritance of ideas, attitudes, customs, and 
directive interests. An age possesses its own peculiar 
pattern ideas, which give bent to the thinking of each” 
individual who lives in that age. It is upon these 
social attitudes and beliefs that the individual mind 
reacts. They serve as a foundation and starting point 
for all originality and creativeness on the part of indi- 
viduals. Such variants in point of view or discovery of 
new truth as may arise from the criticism of inherited 
ideas by men of creative originality are absorbed into 
the mass of social ideas and thus are preserved and 


228 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


handed on. New inventions, as a rule, assume the 
form of improvements on devices that are already in 
existence and, furthermore, as the result of experience 
in the use of these devices. The distance in the 
matter of mechanical perfection between the first 
crude steam-engine and the latest type of swift pas- 
senger locomotive or between the first horseless car- 
riage and the latest model of the automobile is as 
great as could be imagined. The significant thing, 
however, is the fact that the gap between these wide 
extremes of crudity and smoothly running and ele- 
gant perfection is filled up with gradual and minute 
improvements in existing forms. No less does this 
process obtain in the realms of social organization 
and ideas. Progress in government has assumed the 
form of improvement in existing forms of govern- 
ment whereby rights, privileges, and responsibility 
are gradually extended downward to the masses. 
Universally these reforms begin in a criticism of the 
existing social order. Even when these movements 
have been revolutionary, their points of departure 
have been defects in the existing order. The his- 
tory of man’s intellectual life, let us say in the field of 
science or philosophy, can be written in the terms of 
the criticism of traditional ideas by thinkers of re- 
sourcefulness and insight. No less than in the field of 
invention is the gap between one intellectual era and 
another filled by evolving ideas. So true is this pro- 
cedure in the intellectual life that one cannot account 
for, or even fully understand, the intellectual life of 
any period without knowing its backgrounds and 
antecedents. 

Learning itself, as we have also seen, is an enlarge- 
ment and enrichment of shared experience. Not only 
¥ can communication of ideas take place only when 


SOCIAL PARTICIPATION 229 


there is a basis of shared experience, but the social 
situations in which mind reacts upon mind is the soil 
in which fertile and creative ideas arise. The adage, 
“As steel sharpeneth steel, so mind sharpeneth 
mind,” rests upon a perfectly sound psychology. 
This is particularly true when the higher forms of 
mental activity, namely, thinking and evaluation, 
rather than memory and assimilation, are sought for. 
The higher the mental activity, the greater is its sensi- 
tivity to social influence. This is why science, phil- 
osophy, ethics, religion are all so heavily loaded with 
social content, reflecting as each does in the most 
remarkable manner the total background life of a 
people and, in turn, reacting upon that total life. 
If learning is to go forward in the most economical 
and effective way, it must take place in the give-and- 
take relation of associated life, where the reactions of 
mind upon mind, of persons upon persons, of pur- 
poses upon purposes stimulate thinking and creative- 
ness in the forwarding of social enterprises. 

The second consideration is the social character 
of the Christian religion. All religion, in the generic 
sense, is fundamentally social. This has become so 
apparent under psychological analysis that some psy- 
chologists and some sociologists completely identify 


religion with the consciousness of and desire to real- | 


ize social values. Those who would not go so far as 
to identify religion with social values do not hesitate 
to affirm that religion is thoroughly saturated with 
social meaning. This social quality that is implicit 
in all religion whatsoever is specifically and explicitly 
articulate in the Christian religion. The prophets 
conceived religion in terms of right relations to God 
and men expressing themselves in righteous and 
brotherly conduct. “What,” demands Micah, “doth 


> 


230 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God ?”’? When 
asked to define religion, Jesus seized upon love to God 
and to one’s fellow men as the heart and soul of the 
Christian life and found in this ethical-social relation 
the fulfilment of all that was implied in the law and 
the prophets of the Old Testament. The messages 
of both Jesus and the prophets glow with a social 
passion. The objective of Jesus was the inaugura- 
tion of a new order of social living whose ideals and 
purposes were embodied in the phrase that was al- 
ways upon his lips—“‘the Kingdom of God.” In the 
mind of Jesus this new social order could only come 
to pass through the ethicizing, socializing, and spiri- 
tualizing of human relations in every area of life. 

A third consideration lies in the fact that immature 
persons are being prepared to take their places in a 
specialized Christian institution, a social community 
of like-minded persons, known as the church. This 
institution is, In a special sense, the custodian of the 
ideals and purposes of the Kingdom of God. Not 
by any means that all the ethical and social virtues, 
or even all the Christian virtues, are to be found 
exclusively within that institution. But the church — 
is a community of like-minded persons who are de- 
voted to the same ways of looking at life, who are 
actuated by common motives, and who are collec- 
tively responsible for the promotion in human society 
of the ideals of the Christian religion. It is the con- 
tinuing body that should give expression to the 
Christian programme of life and should assume re- 
sponsibility for the promotion of its ideals. But the 
church, like all other institutions, is a social institu- 
tion. It has its characteristic points of view, rela- 
tions, and functions. If these attitudes and purposes 


SOCIAL PARTICIPATION 231 


are to be continuous and vital, the institution must 
see to it that each new generation is initiated into 
them. In the light of the drift of this entire discus- 
sion, the best preparation for living in a Christian 


community will come through actual experience in - 


living the Christian life and carrying on Christian 


enterprises in co-operation with the community that * 


is devoted to this way of life and to these enterprises; 
that is, through social participation in the relations, 
functions, and responsibilities of the Christian 
church. 

A final consideration lies in the fact that the Chris- 
tian religion has a social function and a social respon- 
sibility. The function of the Christian church is to 
spiritualize and motivate the social relations of men 
in every department of hfe—in industry, politics, 
business, international relations. But the cutting 
edge where Christian ideals and motives make them- 
selves effective in these areas of human experience 
is where Christian persons and Christian groups 
touch the relations and functions of actual every-day 
life. If, therefore, the Christian religion is to become 
effective in the conduct of human life, it must find 
expression through the relations and functions of 
Christian persons at the points where they are caught 
up into the intricate pattern of social living. 

But here, again, these relations and functions can- 
not be learned in isolation from real life in the hope 
that through a transfer of training they will be effec- 
tive in actual social living. The Christian mastery 
of these experiences can only come from experience 
in dealing with them in actual situations; that is, 
through the participation of growing persons in the 
relations, functions, and responsibilities of the larger 
social world. Otherwise there can be no assurance 


232, CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


that religious education will have any appreciable 
effect upon the struggle of society with its industrial 
problems, its problems of crime and illiteracy, its 
problems of race adjustments, the problems cen- 
tring in the modern family, or its most colossal and 
urgent problem of war. Enough has been said about 
the uncertain transfer of training and the necessity 
of training in the direction of specific future activities 
to make it more than doubtful that formal training 
apart from actual participation in the solution of 
these specific problems can have any measurable 
effect upon them. What is here proposed is that 
these very situations that constitute the major social 
problems of our age shall be lifted up and placed at 
~the centre of the school community or, better still, 
that the school shall actually go out into the larger 
social world and come to grips with these problems 
in their immediate and concrete forms. Training for 
an attitude of “‘brotherliness,”’ like all other so-called 
“virtues,” is too generalized and abstract. Thinking 
in terms of abstract “virtues”? smacks of a lingering 
faith in the dogma of formal discipline. For the 
Christian learner, if brotherliness is to become effec- 
tive in the outworking of the Christian ideal in these 
central problems of the Great Society, it must actu- 
ally invade these specific fields of relationships and 
spend itself in bringing to realization within them the 
ideals and motives of the Kingdom of God. It is a 
matter of securing Christian responses to concrete 
situations—to the actual problems of industry, the 
family, race relations, and war. Being begun and 
earried forward in working through these relations 
and functions, there is as much certainty that re- 
ligious education will effect changes in the Great 
Society as there is doubt that it will when it thinks 


SOCIAL PARTICIPATION 233 


in terms of “virtues” and “attitudes” apart from_ 
concrete situations. As there is no “honesty” apart « 
from telling the truth or square dealing between 


persons with reference to specific acts, so there is no 
“good-will’’ apart from persons involved in concrete | 


situations, whether personal, industrial, interracial, ) 


or international. That is to say, if these attitudes are } 
to function in concrete situations as they will arise in { 


the Great Society, they must be built up within these ( 


situations. It may be said that the ultimate test ( 


of any programme or organization of religious educa- | 


tion is just this—that it actually makes a difference, 
not only in personal living but in the major problems 
of the Great Society. 

Clearly, what is called for by these necessities of 
the learning process, the nature of the Christian re- 
ligion, the institutional life of the religious move- 
ment, and the function of religion in the life of society 
itself is the organization of the school of religion as a 
religious community—a miniature society whose re- 
lations, functions, and activities are selected with 
reference to these ends, in which they are made ob- 
vious to the mind of the learner, and in which the 
learner actually has experience in living life religi- 
ously through a gradual and responsible participa- 
tion in social living. 

What, then, shall be the organizing centre around 
which the school as a religious community shall be 
built ? 

In view of the fundamentally active, dynamic 
character of experience and in view of the dynamic 
function of religion in human life, it would seem that 
such a centre can best be found in the carrying for- 
ward of typically Christian enterprises. In the selec- 
tion of these enterprises a threefold objective should 


nad 


— 


234 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


be held in mind. These enterprises will need to 
present such situations as will lead to the Christian 
interpretation of life and to the acquisition of depend- 
able skill in perceiving and fulfilling its relations and 
functions. They will also need to present the activi- 
ties that are involved in carrying on the work of the 
church as a specialized institution in such a way as 
to produce a churchman and religious leader who will 
be capable of rightly interpreting the message and 
function of religion in the modern world. It will 
need to embody in its programme those enterprisés 
that bring sharply to the consciousness of the learner 
the larger problems of social life that are involved 
in the forward movement of civilization itself and 
which furnish the arena in which religion is to justify 
its career by unifying, idealizing, spiritualizing, social- 
izing, and motivating human effort in its struggle for 
the highest ends of life. 

The core around which these enterprises should be 
built is manifestly the manifold social relations in 
which the learner and the Christian community are 
involved. These experiences will satisfy the criteria 
for selection discussed under the constituent elements 
of the curriculum. They are real. They are typical. 
In every instance they involve a choice between possi- 
ble alternative outcomes. They have the advantage 
of being continuous, both with the other areas of the 
learner’s experience and with his future experience. 
They have the capacity for absorbing worthful 
knowledge; in fact, there is almost no knowledge that 
these relations are not capable of carrying. They 
have in a unique way the quality of expansiveness 
that leads from the simplest and smallest beginnings 
to the remotest reaches of human life. They empha- 
size the human quality of experience and lead straight 


SOCIAL PARTICIPATION 235 


to values of the highest type. They lie in the very 
soil from which religion itself springs. They bring 
before the learner the major fields in which religion 
is to fulfill its career. 

The possibilities of enterprises erected upon social 
relations, together with the relations and functions 
which they involve, are at once apparent when one 
traces these relations through their endless ramifica- 
tions. The little child is born into a complex of social 
relations and duties. His earliest relations are with 
his parents and brothers and sisters in the home. 
Gradually these relations extend to include the play- 
mates of the neighborhood, the guests in the home, 
and the immediate community environment. All 
these relations call for definition and fulfilment in 
the simple ways which a little child can understand 
and fulfill. When the child enters the formal school 
his circle of relationships and duties greatly ex- 
pands. It now includes his teachers, schoolmates, 
the playground, the larger community which he en- 
counters on the way to and from school, the press, 
the moving-picture house, the “‘tone”’ of the com- 
munity. Through his studies his world is greatly en- 
larged. He becomes familiar with the best that man 
has thought and felt about his relations in literature 
and art, with the broader sweep of human relations 
through history, with man’s increasing mastery over 
his material resources through science. As maturity 
advances he finds himself caught up in the complex 
and tangled relations and functions of modern eco- 
nomic life. He finds himself facing the problems and 
responsibilities of founding his own home and assum- 
ing the functions of parenthood. He is caught up in 
the whole economic and industrial process. Through 
his political relations as a citizen he is drawn into the 


236 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


larger adjustments of national and international poli- 
cies. Through the policies of voluntary relief and 
assistance of the less fortunate peoples of the world he 
finds himself a debtor because of his superior privi- 
leges. In this way, from the small beginnings that 
make up the interests and activities of the little child 
he moves out and forward into the more universal 
and complex relations and functions that spring up 
out of his adjustments to his fellows until his life 
touches in a responsible way the whole range of 
human relations. Here seems to be at hand a thread 
of continuity, lifted out of the actual forward move- 
ment of experience, that will serve as a core for the 
enterprises of the religious community into which, by 
a process of gradual social participation, he is being 
initiated, and precisely in the same way in which he 
will be called upon to define and fulfill the functions 
of mature life. 

By selecting social relationships as the pattern for 
the enterprises that are to be set up, provision is made 
for the use of numerous small enterprises that feed 
into the larger, unified, and forward-moving enter- 
prise. In this way the principle of integration is 
taken care of without doing violence to the necessity 
of that degree of flexibility which normal experience 
requires. In fact, while the main pattern of expe- 
rience follows, on the whole, these expanding social 
relations as experience moves forward from the 
smaller to the larger world, its details consist largely 
of small pieces of activity involved in social relations. 
Thus, while the world statesman moves consistently 
in the orbit of diplomatic relations that touch every 
phase of political and national life, he dines with his 
friends, plays golf with members of his club, vaca- 
tions with a select group of friends on his yacht or in 


SOCIAL PARTICIPATION 237 


the primeval forests of South America. So, while the 
main pattern of the child’s expanding life follows 
the bold figures of home, school, and community 
relations, around these larger central activities play 
all sorts of incidental short-time interests and ac- 
tivities. 

Participation in the life of a religious community 
opens a way for making real to the child his rela- 
tion to God. From this community of persons will 
emerge for him those qualities that will enter into 
his conception of God as the Supreme Person. But 
in such a community God is more than the Supreme 
Person—He is a member of the group. In this way 
the child’s relation to God is grounded, not in theo- 
logical dogmas, but in living and loving personal 
relations. His thought of God grows up in connec- 
tion with the commonplace activities of life. Since 
to him God is a member of the community, all his 
relations to his fellows are tempered and spiritualized 
by the participation of God in the life of the com- 
munity. As a member of the community God shares 
in the ideals, purposes, and decisions of the group, 
as do its other members. Contrariwise, the decisions 
of the group are made with reference to what are be- 
lieved to be the ideals and purposes of the Supreme 
Member. In such a situation prayer as communion 
between himself and God becomes as normal as 
communion between himself and other members of 
the group. As the central experience of the Christian 
life, prayer rises to the level of associated desire and 
effort in the attainment of desires that are shared by 
the community. 

In such a sharing of life as is here proposed the ma- 
ture have quite as much to gain as have the imma- 
ture. If youth needs to learn the ways of life by par- 


238 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


ticipating in its worthful enterprises as it may have 
capacity and experience, adults need to keep open 
within themselves the fountains of youth. They 
need to retain the buoyancy of spirit, the optimism 
and the freshness of experience that are the heritage 
of youth. Youth and age need to be able to share 
each other’s viewpoint. We have touched upon co- 
operation in the control of experience elsewhere. The 
only way through which that co-operation can be 
possible is through understanding. And understand- 
ing rests upon shared experience. In the immediate 
present this constitutes no small problem in educa- 
tion and social control. At the present moment there 
has come a widening breach between the youth of 
the world and its adult life. The youth movement 
throughout the world is a movement of revolt against 
authority imposed from above by the older members 
of society that, for them, represents the outreach of 
the dead past upon the ambitions and hopes of the 
future. On the other hand, the older members of 
society are dismayed at the consciousness that for 
the most part they do not understand youth. The 
way out will come only through understanding and 
sympathy. This understanding can never come be- 
tween the old and the young until the old and the 
young have learned to live a shared life of common 
purposes and effort. 

The ultimate implications of this discussion are far- 
reaching. They are that when society has become 
deeply conscious of the fact that its fundamental 
responsibility is to the child who is learning to live 
his life and to carry forward the continuing enter- 
prises of the race through participation in the enter- 
prises that are going on about him, it will need con- 
sciously to organize its total life around the interests 


SOCIAL PARTICIPATION 239 


of the child. As matters now stand, social enterprises 
are pursued without reference to the education of 
the child. Would we be willing for the child to get 
his interpretation of the meaning and worth of life 
from the basic ideals and motives that are the work- 
ing principles of industry as it is now for the most 
part carried forward? Would it be best for him to 
take his measure of life and learn his attitude toward 
his fellows from the present militaristic basis upon 
which national policies are conducted? Are the 
ideals of a child safe in the commercialized places of 
amusement? Can he safely derive his values of life 
from the crass materialism that too frequently domi- 
nates vocational and social life? Is the world the 
child sees through the scandal-purveying, commer- 
cialized press the world of reality that we wish him 
to build for himself? Is much of the home life of 
western civilization, brutalized by material stan- 
dards of value and irresponsible sex relations, the 
sort of home life in which a child may safely par- 
ticipate? 

To ask questions like these is to set the larger edu- 
cational task for modern society. The task of moral 
and religious education is much larger than can suc- 
cessfully be undertaken by any single institution or 
by any partial group of institutions. It is the task 
of society. To ask such questions is to reveal the 
staggering immensity of the undertaking. But, diffi- 
cult or not, it is something like an organization of our 
whole social life around the educational interests of 
the child that is necessary before we can be safely en- 
trusted with the directing of young life. No matter 
what its particular technic may be, in the final analy- 
sis all education comes about through the initiation 
of the young into the life of the group. A foremost 


240 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


American educator has put it thus strongly, “‘Chil- 
dren are educated in spite of the schools.” Be that as 
it may, this statement goes straight to the heart of 
the larger problem. Whether society is conscious of 
it or not, the education of its youth is an initiation 
into what society itself is, good or bad. Is it hoping 
too much that society in its larger community aspects 
shall be made conscious of this responsibility and be 
led to organize its processes and functions in such a 
way that, through participating in its life, childhood 
may come into an appreciation of that which is 
beautiful and good and worthy of the high destiny 
of the human spirit? 

But upon this larger movement moral and re- 
ligious education may not wait. The agencies that 
are responsible for religious education must begin by 
organizing themselves into a community of religious 
life wherein the young may form constructive atti- 
tudes toward life, with positive reactions to those 
things that are wholesome and with negative reac- 
tions to those things that are destructive of the finer 
qualities of personal and social living. 


XVI 
THE PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION 


ONE of the most significant discoveries of modern 
psychology has been the nature and extent of indi- 
vidual differences. Social groups as well as indi- 
viduals exhibit the same tendency to vary. A 
curriculum, therefore, that is based upon experience 
must make due allowance for the wide range of dif- 
ferences in original nature and experience both as 
respects individuals within the group and as respects 
groups themselves. 

Individual differences are both quantitative and 
qualitative. The quantitative difference in the abil- 
ity of persons to respond to situations accurately 
and effectively is very great. On the basis of actual 
measurements, Professor Edward L. Thorndike esti- 
mates that the most gifted child in a grade in school, 
counting only those who are able to do passing work, 
will do six times as much work as the least gifted 
and that he will do it with less than one-sixth as many 
errors. If all the children were taken into account, 
the difference would be very much greater. This 
is probably a fair estimate of the difference in the 
performance of normal persons in the practical affairs 
of every-day life. 

Quite as significant as the range of difference is 
the fact that the differences between members of a 
normal group are small and continuous. The dif- 
ference between the most able and the least able is 
merely a matter of the sum of all the differences that 
lie between when a sufficient number of persons are 

241 


242 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


involved. This distribution of differences has a ten- 
dency to show a larger number of small differences 
than of great differences. So characteristic is this 
tendency that, if the group is homogeneous and its 
number sufficiently large, the differences tend to lie 
close to a norm in what the statistician calls the 
“surface of frequency,” a bell-shaped figure with a 
thick and high centre and with edges shading off in 
both directions to points on the base line. 

The qualitative differences of persons are quite as 
great as their quantitative differences. Persons have 
different capacities, different interests, different ways 
of doing things. To take but one example, some 
minds are particularly well organized for dealing suc- 
cessfully with abstract ideas and symbols. Persons 
having such minds show unusual ability in learning 
languages and solving mathematical problems. It not 
infrequently happens, however, that such persons are 
correspondingly unable to manage things and persons 
in the so-called “practical”? activities of every-day 
life. Other minds are unusually successful in dealing 
with things and persons in concrete situations but are 
correspondingly unable to deal with abstract ideas. 
It is difficult to say which has the more useful con- 
tribution to make to society. It is not a question of 
deciding which is the “better” type of mind, but of 
recognizing each for what it can do best and of 
developing in each person those unique qualities that 
make him a distinctive person. Unfortunately, the 
traditional school has been organized for the most 
part on the basis of the capacities of the abstract- 
minded learner. For this reason it has not infre- 
quently happened that concrete-minded persons 
could not get on well in school and have been 
eliminated, notwithstanding the fact that some of 


THE PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION 243 


them have been among the most useful men society 
has ever possessed. These differences run through all 
sorts of qualities. Some persons are thoughtful and 
critical, while others are superficial and undiscrim- 
inating. Some react with strong emotions, while 
others are emotionally indifferent. Some are quick 
and decisive in their reactions, while others are slow 
and hesitant. Some are persistent, while others are 
easily led aside from their purpose or are easily dis- 
couraged. 

Groups differ quite as widely as individuals. Their 
differences ure qualitative, however, rather than 
quantitative. It is the opinion of anthropologists that 
differences in the degree of ability among different 
racial groups are less than has frequently been sup- 
posed, though there are some psychologists who hold 
that some races are vastly superior in capacity to 
others. Within any large area, especially in America, 
there will be included many divergent groups. In 
America, the natural tendency of modern society to 
become more and more highly differentiated into 
specialized classes, such as the industrial and the 
agricultural or the industrial and the capitalistic 
classes, is immensely complicated by the fact of im- 
migration that brings together many divergent racial 
stocks and as many divergent racial cultures. 

Thus we have in America radically divergent racial 
groups. The more fundamental differences involve 
the white race, the negroes, who have been specially 
localized in the South but are increasingly being 
diffused throughout the nation, the Indians on the 
several reservations, and the Orientals, who are espe- 
cially localized on the western coast but are present 
in all the larger population centres. In addition to 
these larger racial divisions, we have a multiplicity 


244 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


of European stocks, ranging from the more or less 
homogeneous stocks that come from the north and 
west of Europe to the widely divergent stocks from 
the south and east of Europe. The problem is 
further complicated by the fact that some of these 
groups are encysted in the social organization and re- 
sist the forces of assimilation. 

Similarly, there are widely divergent occupational 
groups. The most fundamental cleavage is between 
those persons who dwell in the rural sections and those 
who dwell in cities. Those who live in the country 
are devoted to agricultural pursuits, while those who 
dwell in the cities are engaged almost exclusively in 
industrial pursuits or commerce in its various forms. 
Within recent years, as a result of the tremendous 
increase in the relative growth of industry, there has 
been a pronounced drift toward the cities. At the 
present time more than one-half of the people of 
America live in cities. Distributed throughout the 
nation are such special occupational groups as the 
miners, those engaged in lumbering, coke-burners, 
those who work in oil fields, and the various migra- 
tory groups devoted to seasonal occupations, to say 
nothing of the various professional groups and those 
engaged in a multitude of minor occupations. 

To these must be added what may be designated as 
special geographical groups, such as the mountain- 
eers in the South who, because of their isolation, 
form a special problem in education, religion, and 
citizenship. The city slum presents its own particular 
problem. Literacy groups correlate with others of 
these divisions and present their own problems. 

A special problem in religious education is pre- 
sented by the religious differences that cut across 
most of these other alignments. In America there is 


THE PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION 245 


the fundamental cleavage between the Christians 
and the Jews. The Christians, in turn, are widely 
separated into Protestant and Catholic groups. And, 
to complicate the problem to the last degree, 
Protestantism itself is subdivided into an innumer- 
able number of sects, each having its own particular 
body of religious beliefs, ecclesiastical polity, and 
programme of work. 

The causes of individual and group differences are 
three in number. Back of all of them lie differences 
in original nature. According to this factor persons 
tend to vary from, as well as to conform to, biological 
lines of inheritance. These differences include men- 
tal and moral as well as physical characteristics. 
The members of the same race tend to have the same 
physical characteristics, such as stature, cephalic 
index, physiognomy, and color of skin, eyes, and 
hair. In this way certain well-defined racial types 
are developed, such as the Norwegian, the African, 
the Japanese, and the Italian. As in the case of 
individuals, races differ in their mental and moral 
characteristics as a result of original nature. The 
Greeks were versatile, active, reflective, creative. 
The South European peoples are imaginative, warm 
with feeling, and ssthetic. The English are character- 
istically practical and matter-of-fact. The German 
mind is characteristically ponderous. In fact, know- 
ing these characteristics of different races, it is possi- 
ble to trace certain qualities in mixed populations 
like our own to their racial sources. 

A second factor in individual and group differences 
is the environment to which the individual or the 
group responds. In fact, the greater number of racial 
criteria have been developed in this way. Pigmenta- 
tion is the result of the adjustment of a race through 


246 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


long periods of time to climatic conditions. The same 
may be said of stature, hair formation, and cephalic 
index. Professor Franz Boas found that the cephalic 
index of the children of immigrant Jews differed per- 
ceptibly from that of their parents. From what we 
have seen concerning the nature of experience, we 
would expect to find decided differences arising out 
of the adjustment process, through the building up 
of certain characteristic responses to certain types 
of situations into permanent modes of behavior. 
These permanent slants that experience gives rise to 
include ways of looking at things, prejudices, ways of 
doing things. As a result, it is scarcely more difficult 
to identify the group to which a person belongs than 
it is to identify the race to which he belongs. The 
mountaineer, the farmer, the prospector, the high- 
powered captain of industry—all these persons bear 
the type-marks of the groups to which they belong 
as the result of long and continued reaction to rather 
definitely organized sets of stimuli. 

The third factor in determining individual and 
group difference is social heredity. Each person is 
born into a slightly different social background. 
From this background he takes over unconsciously 
the inherited traditions, customs, and viewpoints of 
his group. In this way he learns, without conscious 
choice, his mother tongue. In his dress he uncon- 
sciously follows the dress of his people. The char- 
acter of his food, his manner of eating, his social 
forms—all these are for the most part taken over. 
So also are his beliefs to a very large extent. Most 
persons are members of their political parties, not 
because they have thought through the matters 
of economic or political policy, but because of sec- 
tional, class, or family tradition. Most persons are 


THE PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION Q47 


members of their religious communions for the same 
reason. Racial prejudice, intellectual bias, class an- 
tagonisms — these are all more or less the results 
of social-mental attitudes into which one is born. 
In like manner, each group has its own social, 
cultural, and intellectual background. These atti- 
tudes and appreciations are passed on from one 
generation to another within the group, with the re- 
sult that the mental outlook of the group is deter- 
mined by its own organized habits of thought and 
feeling. 

These individual and group differences present a 
difficult problem to curriculum-builders, especially 
when the curriculum sets as its objective the enrich- 
ment and direction of experience. The difficulty of 
the problem is complicated by three considerations. 

The first is that if the curriculum is to enrich and 
control experience, it must be directly related to the 
experience of the individual or the group. This 
means that the curriculum must be sufficiently 
flexible to take care of both the quantitative and 
qualitative differences in the experience of individuals 
within a homogeneous group. Learners who are 
quick in their responses, energetic, and capable should 
find it possible to press on in the pursuit of their 
enterprises as rapidly as their own capacities may 
determine, while those who are slow and uncertain 
should find it possible to linger over the difficult 
places until the experience has cleared. Each person 
should find it possible also to pursue those enterprises 
that well up out of his own unique experience and 
follow out their implications in ways that may have 
most meaning and worth to him. Manifestly, even 
in a homogeneous group, this calls for a group of 
enterprises that are under way at the same moment, 


248 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


in which different persons or smaller groups com- 
posed of persons of similar interests and capacities 
are engaged. 

Perhaps in an even higher degree is this true of 
different social groups. Experiences that would be 
characteristic of one group might not, and in many 
instances certainly would not, be characteristic of 
other groups. Thus, a curriculum for the school of 
religion in the rural community will need to be cen- 
tred in the interests, processes, and activities of agri- 
culture. The source materials upon which the learner 
will draw will be determined by their ability to throw 
light upon rural activities. On the other hand, the 
curriculum for the urban school of religion will be 
based upon the interests and activities of the city 
dweller, and the source material will be such as to 
throw light upon the experiences of city life. In the 
same way each type of industrial centre, each occu- 
pational group, each racial group will require a cur- 
riculum that is based upon a study of the character- 
istic experiences of that group. Otherwise, religious 
ideals and attitudes will be matters apart from real 
life and will not, on that account, function in the 
conduct of life. 

The problem of adaptation is especially acute in the 
matter of building curricula for mission lands. In this 
case the racial, cultural, and religious backgrounds 
demand the most careful consideration. This is-par- 
ticularly true of the religious backgrounds. The task 
of replacing one set of religious ideas and attitudes 
with another wholly foreign to the soil and civiliza- 
tion of a people is in any case a delicate and difficult 
process. Much of the background of non-Christian 
peoples is of permanent religious value, and, accord- 
ing to one of the fundamental principles of Jesus, 


THE PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION 249 


ought to be preserved. He announced it as His 
fundamental approach to the religion which His own 
superseded that He came, not to destroy, but to ful- 
fill. The task of religious education in mission lands 
is to bring the religious experience of non-Christian 
peoples under the direction of Christian ideals and 
motives. In order to accomplish this delicate adjust- 
ment safely, religious education must move close to 
the religious backgrounds of the people whose re- 
ligion is to be replaced. It is manifestly impossible 
for any alien group to construct curricula for the 
growing Christian communities in mission lands in 
the atmosphere and against the backgrounds of 
Kuropean and American religion. The utmost that 
the alien can do is to assist trained native Christians 
in constructing their own curricula in the light of the 
particular needs of their own people. Under no other 
conditions can the Christian religion become indige- 
nous to the life of these peoples. 

The second consideration is that the curriculum 
must provide some basis for a social, shared experi- 
ence. Life is quite as social as it is individual. As we 
have already seen in the course of this discussion, 
democracy, toward the ideals of which we are rapidly 
tending throughout the world, is at bottom a form of 
associated living—a living of life in give-and-take 
relations. An absolute necessity for a form of social 
living that involves a sharing of privileges, of func- 
tions, and of responsibilities is a common body of 
experience that eventuates in common points of view, 
common purposes, and the ability of persons to think 
and act together effectively. These necessities have 
been greatly enlarged since the World War. The 
sharing of life has by that event been lifted upon an 
infinitely broader basis, involving the adjustment of 


250 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


national groups, international classes, and races on a 
world basis. Consequently, whether it wills it or not, 
religion finds itself placed in this larger setting. At 
the very moment when a democratic ideal of life 
calls for an attitude of good-will and co-operation and 
a mastery of the technic of living together, modern 
society 1s showing marked tendencies to fall in pieces. 
Civilization itself is imperiled by these forces of social 
disintegration. 

Does not this situation call for the conscious 
organization of experience in social directions? Does 
it not place an emphasis upon those rich and satis- 
fying common elements of experience that support 
our social life and bind it into a living, organic 
whole? The approach to the solution of this problem 
of the modern world is not chiefly through the me- 
chanics of agreements and covenants; it is through 
the building up, through the patient methods of edu- 
cation, of social attitudes. In the very field where re- 
ligion is, by its very nature, able to contribute most 
to this problem the religious educator dare not be 
unaware of his opportunity or responsibility. His 
central approach to this problem is through the cur- 
riculum. If the curriculum has erred in the past 
through failing to emphasize individual and group 
differences, it must not swing to the opposite radical 
extreme of building on the principle of individualism 
without a constructive balancing emphasis upon its 
social content. 

A third consideration lies in the fact that the 
curriculum must arrive somewhere. A theory of the 
curriculum that commits itself to a thoroughgoing 
individualism in the selection of experiences for 
educational purposes will lead to a fragmentariness 
of experience something like that which characterizes 


THE PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION 251 


so much of the informal experience out of school. 
By following exclusively the lead of piecemeal, de- 
tached interests, the curriculum could easily present 
a mass of unorganized experiences that would fall 
in pieces. Integration, as we have seen, is an abso- 
lute necessity of sound experience. Education is an 
active, purposive process. Its function is to produce 
desirable changes. Its primary responsibility is to 
erect goals that are socially as well as individually 
worthful. As society’s fundamental method of prog- 
ress, education should assume a constructive, direc- 
tive, and creative attitude toward the future. 

It is just as necessary, therefore, that the curricu- 
lum shall arrive in the end at an organized, consistent, 
forward-moving social experience as that it should 
take its departure from such fragmentary and unre- 
lated experience as it may find in individuals or 
groups. Without neglecting persons or groups, it 
must seek in the end to build a Christian society 
that rests upon shared Christian ideals and purposes. 
Only so can the Kingdom of God, in which persons 
are the while finding a rich and abundant life, be 
realized. 

In the reconciliation of this threefold necessity 
the curriculum-builder will find one of his most 
difficult undertakings. And here, as in other prob- 
lems connected with the curriculum as experience, 
the way out will not come through the first attempts 
on the basis of theory. The approach must be experi- 
mental. But to see clearly these fundamental neces- 
sities is the first step in the working out of the pro- 
gramme. 


XVIi 
A DYNAMIC CURRICULUM 


Ir is impossible for a curriculum built upon experi- 
ence ever to be completed. In its very nature it must 
be a changing, growing, forward-moving thing. Con- 
sequently, those who work in the field of the cur- 
riculum must hold themselves always in readiness to 
modify their objectives, shift their point of view, and 
reconstruct the materials with which they work. 

For one thing, the experience upon which the cur- 
riculum rests is complex. The process of adjustment 
from which experience emerges is to a world of reality 
that possesses infinite possibilities. Man and his 
world develop in reciprocal relations. Through re- 
sponding to his world man has developed an increas- 
ingly penetrating intelligence; as his intelligence in- 
creases, his insight into his world reveals relations 
that before had been unsuspected. Man’s amazing 
scientific discoveries in recent years lead one to be- 
lieve, not that the possibilities of his world are near- 
ing exhaustion, but that he has only begun his expe- 
dition of exploration. 

This is particularly true respecting man’s under- 
standing of himself and of his human relations. Up 
to this time man’s chief discoveries have been in the 
area of material phenomena and forces. He has only 
made the barest beginning of the exploration of his 
own spirit. What is there to come to the light of clear 
knowledge one can only conjecture. A whole uni- 
verse will be added to his experience when he comes 
to understand himself even as he now imperfectly 

252 


A DYNAMIC CURRICULUM 253 


understands the electron. His understanding of 
human relations and the technic of living together 
in groups or in intergroup association is limited to 
the sketchiest outlines. What will happen when he 
masters his racial, international, and class relations 
will be worthy of a Utopian dreamer. But if these 
as yet relatively unexplored areas yield as great possi- 
bilities as they promise, and if man’s insights are 
commensurate with the reality which they reveal, it 
is certain that his experience is bound to become en- 
riched and deepened beyond measure. 

All that has been said thus far might be true of a 
perfectly static world that is undergoing discovery. 
But the modern mind has introduced into its con- 
ception of reality the idea of development. It sees 
in its world, not a static blue-print of things as they 
have been and ever will be, but movement, change, 
becoming. It sees the past emerging from millenni- 
ums of becoming; it sees its present as a movement 
toward an undefinable and unpredictable future. 
The highest upreach of this conception 1s the idea 
of progress, which is the hope of transforming change 
into achievement. This hope is born of man’s confi- 
dence, based upon initial successes in this direction, 
in his ability to produce changes in his world that are 
in keeping with his desires and purposes. The far- 
thest reach of this confidence is his hope that some- 
time, through an understanding of the processes that 
are involved in the creation of personality and a 
social order, he will be able to change his own nature 
through the remaking of his own desires and purposes. 

A complex and changing experience carries with 
it a continuous reorganization of values. Not only 
do these values change from group to group, but 
within the same group they change from time to 


254 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


time. Thus, some values are constantly undergoing 
a process of decay while others, entirely new, are 
putting in their appearance. 

All of which means that so far as we can now see 
the stream of human experience will continually 
change, that out of it new values will emerge while 
old values pass away, and that new meanings will at- 
tach themselves to man’s activities. If the curricu- 
lum is to be based upon that changing experience 
and is to introduce the element of co-operative con- 
trol into it, it must be subject to continuous change 
and incompleteness. 

But it is not enough that in a world of change and 
becoming the curriculum should be dynamic in its 
content and organization; its function within expe- 
rience must be dynamic. The curriculum as a factor 
of direction becomes an instrument in the hands of 
the religious community for preparing persons to live 
religiously in a complex and rapidly changing world. 
The dynamic curriculum must be more than a fol- 
lower of experience; it must anticipate experience 
and give it constructive direction. Its attention 
must be fixed upon the unrealized future. It must 
seek its function in giving substance to things hoped 
for. Above all, it will find its highest function when 
it becomes an instrument in the hands of a forward- 
looking and creative church for deliberately building 
the Kingdom of God, and in the hands of individual 
Christians for the realization of the “new creation” 
of a Christlike character. 

One of the ways in which a dynamic curriculum 
will achieve these results will be through creating 
the conditions that lead to continuous growth. When 
the curriculum is thought of in terms of an enriched 
and controlled experience it ceases to be limited to 


A DYNAMIC CURRICULUM Q55 


any period of life. The highest attainment of the 
learning process is learning how to learn. All too 
easily has the religious educator assumed the in- 
educability of the adult. The result has been that 
he has concentrated his attention almost exclusively 
upon the periods of childhood and youth. Modern 
psychology does not accord its sanction to such a 
limited view of learning. Learning, which, in the 
light of the present discussion, is only another word 
for acquiring an increasing mastery of the technic of 
managing experience, should continue as long as 
experience continues and presents new aspects. A 
serious limitation to the service which traditional 
religious education has rendered has been just this 
failure to provide against those rigid adjustments of 
experience that can only fit in with a static world. 
The builder of the curriculum based upon experience 
should see to it that through dealing with experience 
an attitude of mind is created that will carry the 
learning process throughout life. 

A second function of the dynamic curriculum 
should be to create a vital conception of truth. It 
should lead the growing person to seek the sources 
of truth, not in an authoritative institution or litera- 
ture, but in the warm and moving current of life 
itself. It should lead him to discover it in gripping 
convictions rather than in dogmas or theological 
formulations. It should lead him to think of truth 
as a function of life and therefore a living and grow- 
ing thing. It should lead him to see that all truth of 
whatever sort is one, and there can be no conflict 
between so-called “scientific”? truth and “religious” 
truth. Only so can religious education avoid the 
destructive alternative between fanaticism without 
intelligence on the one hand or critical intelligence 


256 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


without reverence on the other. Perhaps religious 
leaders face no more fundamental problem than just 
this in the period that is now upon them—the har- 
monizing of the scientific and the religious attitude 
in an intelligent faith. A vital view of truth will look 
to the future with even more confidence than to the 
past for the fresh discoveries of the spirit that await 
those who can keep open their contacts with reality, 
and who will not only hospitably receive new truth, 
but seek after it as the chief quest of a devoted life. 

The dynamic curriculum will educate for the tol- 
erant mind. This is the necessary correlate of that 
open-mindedness that makes continuous learning 
possible. The tolerant mind is quite content that the 
truth itself should be its own defender. It looks upon 
an attempt to defend the truth as a naive and uncon- 
scious confession of doubt. Instead, what the truth 
calls for is, not defense, but understanding. The tol- 
erant mind finds the most effective method of ex- 
tending truth through neither propaganda nor force, 
but through clear and convincing exposition. The 
tolerant mind is more concerned that it should under- 
stand the viewpoint of others than that it should im- 
pose its own viewpoint upon them. It is full of sym- 
pathy and brotherliness. For this reason it respects 
loyalty to conviction wherever it may find convic- 
tion as one of the most priceless virtues of the good 
life. It looks upon prejudice and exclusive sectarian- 
ism of every form as a yielding to weakness in the 
human spirit. The curriculum should furnish the 
basis for appreciation and understanding and should 
build up the attitudes and habits of respect for the 
convictions of others. It should direct attention to 
the vastly greater common elements of faith that 
unite persons rather than to the minor and often 


A DYNAMIC CURRICULUM 257 


superficial differences that separate them. In this 
way the dynamic curriculum will stress the larger 
loyalties that unite men into the larger and more 
fundamental groups rather than the secondary loyal- 
ties that separate them into antagonistic groups. 

A fourth objective toward which the dynamic cur- 
riculum should strive is the responsible mind. This 
attitude on the part of persons is one of the primary 
necessities of any form of social living or co-operative 
thinking and effort. In the earliest movements of 
thought toward democracy, the emphasis was first 
placed upon opportunity and privilege. Only slowly 
is there developing a consciousness of the fact that 
democracy involves a sharing of responsibility as 
well. Religious thought has shown the same ten- 
dency. Much of the thought of religious persons is 
still centred in the consideration of the advantages 
that religion can confer. Not infrequently this atti- 
tude never rises above that which is crassly selfish. 
The more the ideals of democracy take possession of 
the religious life the more the consciousness of social 
responsibility must be developed. This is one of the 
great contributions which religion is in a position 
to make to the social order if it is organized so as to 
do so effectively. The responsible Christian mind 
will thoroughly scrutinize the consequences of its 
thinking and acting, not only upon the future direc- 
tion of one’s own experience, but upon the Christian 
cause and the social order. Its sense of freedom in 
thought and choice will be sobered by a balancing 
sense of accountability. 

A fifth objective of the dynamic curriculum will be 
the creation of a forward-looking type of religious 
experience. Historically, religion has developed two 
distinct types—the backward-looking and the for- 


258 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


ward-looking. Not only have these points of view 
been characteristic of certain religions, but they have 
grown up side by side in the same religion. This was 
true in the Hebrew religion, with the priestly and 
scribal religion on the one hand and the religion of 
the prophets on the other. It has always been true 
of historic Christianity. A sharp divergence of these 
types is clearly in evidence in the literature of the 
New Testament. Wherever these two points of view 
have appeared together, they have always existed in 
sharp antagonism. Backward-looking religion lives 
in the past, bound by tradition, dogma, and the 
institution. It is legalistic, ritualistic, and authorita- 
tive. Forward-looking religion has its aspirations 
fixed upon the unrealized possibilities of life. It 
lives close to experience and is warm with vital 
and social meaning. Whether religion is backward- 
looking or forward-looking will depend entirely upon 
the values around which it is organized. If it is 
organized around the values of the past, it will be 
backward-looking, static. If it is organized around 
the unrealized values of the future it will be forward- 
looking. How it shall be organized is primarily the 
function of religious education to determine. The 
experience curriculum is fitted to organize the re- 
ligion of the present and future around the great 
ideals and values that, when realized, will mean the 
realization of the Kingdom of God. It is the only 
curriculum that can realize this objective so well. 
Finally, the highest objective of the curriculum as 
experience is the creation, in religious persons and in 
the collective religious community, of a creative atti- 
tude toward life. Religion is a fundamental and irre- 
ducible aspect of human experience. The discovery 
of its origin in the highest functions of the mind is a 


A DYNAMIC CURRICULUM 259 


comparatively recent achievement of the psycholo- 
gist. In religion society possesses a resource of the 
highest value for the making of human life effective. 
The religious educator can rise to no higher concep- 
tion of his task than the organization of religious 
experience as a factor for the enrichment and ad- 
vancement of human life. To come to a clear under- 
standing of what the function of religion is and then 
intelligently to organize it for these ends lifts the 
_ function of the religious educator to the level of 
spiritual engineering. At this level of creative effort 
the religious educator comes into fellowship with God 
as the Creator of values in an age-long enterprise of 
building a social order founded upon spiritual ideals. 





BIBLIOGRAPHY 


The following bibliography is in no sense intended 
to be exhaustive. It is merely suggestive of the 
more significant sources and background discussions 
for the fundamental concepts presented in the text. 
For the convenience of students, the bibliography 
has been arranged under a few of the major topics. 


ON THE CURRICULUM IN GENERAL 


Artman, J. M. ‘Evaluation of Curricula for Week-Day Re- 
ligious Education,” art. Religious Education. April, 1922. 

——, ‘Scientific Method as a Scheme for Evaluating Curricula,” 
art. Religious Education. 

Ballantyne, William C. Religious Education for the Coming So~ 
cial Order. Boston, 1917. 

Betts, George H. The Curriculum of Religious Education. New 
York, 1924. 

Blashfield, F. W. ‘‘Expanding the Curriculum,” art. Church 
School. June, 1923. 

Bobbitt, Franklin. The Curriculum. Boston, 1918. 

, How to Make a Curriculum. Boston, 1924. 

Bower, William C. ‘‘The Proposed Programme of the Inter- 
national Curriculum of Religious Education,” art. Church 
School. November, 1923. 

-——, *‘A Suggestive Approach to the Reconstruction of the Cur- 
riculum of the School of Religion,” art. Religious Educa- 
tion. June, 1917. 

, The Educational Task of the Local Church. St. Louis, 1921. 

Charters, W. W. Curriculum Construction. New York, 1923. 

Coe, George A. “‘Opposing Theories of the Curriculum,” art. 
Religious Education. April, 1922. 

——, ‘‘Week-Day Curricular Material,” art. Church School. 
September, 1922. 

Dewey, John. The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago, 1902. 

——, The School and Society. Chicago, 1900. 

261 








262 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


‘Findings of the Forest Hills Conference on the Correlation of 
Programmes,” report. Church School. October, 1923. 
Hartshorne, Hugh. “A School of the Christian Life—Courses 
of Study,” art. Church School. January, 1923. 

. “A School of the Christian Life—The Curriculum,” art. 

Church School. November, 1922. 

Haslett, Samuel B. The Pedagogical Bible School. New York, 
1908. 

Hill, Patty Smith, et al. A Conduct Curriculum for the Kinder- 
garten and First Grade. New York, 1923. 

Meriam, Junius L. Child Life and the Curriculum. Yonkers- 
on-Hudson, 1921. 

Meyers, A. J. W. “‘A Critical Review of Current Lesson Ma- 
terial,” art. Religious Education. August, 1917. 

Norton, John K. ‘‘A General Survey of the Curriculum Situa- 





tion,’ art. Journal of Educational Research. September, 
1924. 

Pease, George W. Outline of a Bible School Curriculum. Chi- 
cago, 1904. 

Sampey, John R. The Iniernational Lesson System. New York, 
1911. 


Shaver, Erwin L. The Project Principle in Religious Education. 
Chicago, 1924. 

‘Statement of a Theory of the Curriculum,” prepared by the 
Committee on International Curriculum of Religious Edu- 
cation and issued by the International Lesson Committee. 
January 25, 1924. 

Wells, Margaret A. A Project Curriculum. Philadelphia, 1921. 

Winchester, Benjamin S. “‘The Church School Curriculum,” 
art. Church School. January, 1921. 


HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDS AND DEVELOPMENT 
OF EDUCATIONAL CONCEPTS 


Adams, George B. Civilization During the Middle Ages. New 
York, 1899. 

Adams, John. The Herbartian Psychology Applied to Teaching. 
Boston, 1906. 

Archer, R. L. Rousseau on Education. London, 1912. 

Bolton, Frederick. Prinetples of Education. New York, 1910. 

Compayré, G. Herbart and Education by Instruction. New 
York, 1907. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 263 


Cubberley, Ellwood P. History of Education. Boston, 1922. 

——, Public Education in the United States. Boston, 1919. 

Davidson, J. New Interpretation of Herbart’s Psychology. Edin- 
burgh, 1906. 

De Garmo, G. Herbart and Herbartians. New York, 1895. 

Drever, J. Greek Education. Cambridge, 1912. 

Eckoff, W. J. Pestalozz1’s Idea of an ABC of Sense-perception 
and Minor Pedagogical Works of Herbart. New York, 1896. 

Emerson, Mabel I. The Evolution of the Educational Ideal. Bos- 
ton, 1914. 

Encyclopedia of Education. (Paul Monroe, editor.) New York, 
1919. 

Fletcher, S. S. T., and Welton, J. Froebel’s Chief Educational 
Writings. New York, 1912. 

Graves, Frank P. A History of Education. 3 vols. New York, 
1914. 

Green, J. (editor). Pestalozzi’s Educational Writings. New 
York, 1916. 

Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence. 2 vols. New York, 1905. 

Herbart, J. F. Allgemeine Pddagogie. 1806. 

, Outlines of Educational Doctrine. New York, 1901. 

——, Umriss Pédagogischer Vorlesungen. 1835. 

Hughes, James L. Froebel’s Educational Laws. New York, 1904. 

Keatinge, M. W. The Great Didactic of Comenius. London, 1896. 

Laurie, 8. S. John Amos Comenius. Syracuse, 1892. 

Lindsay, T. M. A History of the Reformation. 2 vols. New 
York, 1906, 1907. 

Locke, John. Educational Writings. (J. W. Adamson, editor.) 
New York, 1912. 

Monroe, Paul. Source-Book in the History of Education. New 
York, 1919. 

, Text-Book in the History of Education. New York, 1912. 

Monroe, W.S. Comenius and the Beginnings of Educational Re- 
form. New York, 1900. 

National Herbart Society. Yearbook. 1895, 1896, articles by 
C. C. VanLiew, J. Dewey, E. E. Brown, C. H. Galbreath, 
B. A. Hinsdale, C. A. McMurry. 

Quick, R. H. Essays on Educational Reformers. New York, 
1896. 

Rein, W. Outline of Pedagogy. London, 1898. 

Robinson, James H. Medieval and Modern Times. New York, 
1919. 








264 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Spedding, J. Account of the Life and Times of Francis Bacon. 
London, 1879. 

Spencer, Herbert. Education. New York, 1860. 

**A Statement of Recent Tendencies in Education,” prepared 
by the Committee on International Curriculum of Religious 
Education and issued by the Internatiénal Lesson Commit- 
tee. January 25, 1924. 

Taylor, Henry O. The Medieval Mind. 2 vols. New York, 1914. 

Twentieth Century Yearbook, the National Society for the Study 
of Education, various numbers of Part I. 

Woodward, W. H. Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Edu- 
eators. Cambridge, 1912. 


ON A FUNCTIONAL VIEW OF THE MIND 


Angell, J. R. Psychology. New York, 1904. 

Baldwin, J. Mark. Mental Development. New York, 1915. 

Calkins, M. W. A First Book in Psychology. New York, 1910. 

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. 

, Essays in Experimental Logic. Chicago, 1916. 

, Human Nature and Conduct. New York, 1922. 

Ellwood, Charles A. An Introduction to Social Psychology. New 
York, 1917. 

Freud, Sigmund. General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. New 
York, 1920. 

Hobhouse, L. Mind in Evolution. London, 1901. 

Holt, E. B. The Freudian Wish and Its Place in Ethics. New 
York, 1915. 

James, William. The Principles of Psychology. 2 vols. New 
York, 1905. 

Jastrow, Joseph. The Subconscious. Boston, 1905. 

Judd, Charles H. ‘“‘Evolution of Consciousness,” art. Psy- 
chological Review, XVII, ‘77-97. 

——, “‘Motor Processes in Consciousness,” art. Journal of 
Philosophy, VI, 85-91. 

» Psychology. New York, 1907. 

McDougall, William. Body and Mind: A History and a Defense 
of Animism. New York, 1913. 

——, An Introduction to Social Psychology. Boston, 1918. 

, Outline of Psychology. New York, 1923. 

Marshall, Henry R. Mind and Conduct. New York, 1920. 

Pierce, Frederick. Our Unconscious Mind. New York, 1922. 














BIBLIOGRAPHY 265 


Pillsbury, W. B. Essentials of Psychology. New York, 1911. 

Prince, M. The Unconscious. New York, 1914. — 

Robinson, James H. Mind in the Making. New York and Lon- 
don, 1921. 

Stout, G. F. Groundwork of Psychology. New York, 1903. 

, Manual of Psychology. New York, 1899. 

Tansley, A. G. The New Psychology and Its Relation to Life. 
New York, 1920. 

Thompson, W. Hanna. Brain and Personality. New York, 1916. 

Thorndike, Edward L. The Original Nature of Man. New 
York, 1913. 

Watson, John B. Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist. 
Philadelphia, 1919. 

Woodworth, Robert S. Dynamic Psychology. New York, 1918. 

, Psychology. New York, 1921. 








ON PERSONS AND SELF-REALIZATION 


Bowne, Borden P. Personalism. Boston, 1908. 

Dewey, John, and Tufts, J. H. Ethics. New York, 1909. 

Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. (J. Mark Baldwin, 
editor.) 2 vols. New York, 1918, 1920. 

Groves, Ernest R. Personality and Social Adjustment. New 
York, 1923. 

Hobhouse, L. Mind in Evolution. London, 1901. 

Leighton, Joseph A. The Field of Philosophy. Columbus, 1919. 


ON THE CONCEPT OF ADJUSTMENT 


Coe, George A. Psychology of Religion. Chicago, 1916. 

——, A Social Theory of Religious Education. New York, 1917. 

O’Shea, M. V. Education as Adjustment. New York, 1908. 

Thorndike, Edward L. The Psychology of Learning. New York, 
1913. 


ON THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 


Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. 
, Essays in Experimental Logic. Chicago, 1916. 

, German Philosophy and Politics. New York, 1915. 
——, How We Think. Boston, 1910. 

——, Human Nature and Conduct. New York, 1922. 
——, The Reconstruction of Philosophy. New York, 1920. 








266 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Dewey, John, et al. Creative Intelligence. New York, 1917. 

James, William. Pragmatism. New York, 1914. 

, The Principles of Psychology. 2 vols. New York, 1905. 

Thorndike, Edward L. The Original Nature of Man. New 
York, 1913. 

——, The Psychology of Learning. New York, 1913. 





ON THE ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 


Bawden, H. Heath. Principles of Pragmatism. Boston, 1910. 

Bradley, F. N. Essays on Truth and Reality. Oxford, 1914. 

Dewey, John. Essays in Experimental Logic. Chicago, 1916. 

, German Philosophy and Politics. New York, 1915. 

——, How We Think. Boston, 1910. 

—, The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy. New York, 

1910. 

, The Reconstruction of Philosophy. New York, 1920. 

Dewey, John, et al. Creative Intelligence. New York, 1917. 

James, William. Pragmatism. New York, 1914. 

Kilpatrick, William H. ‘‘ Meaning and Thinking,” art. Journal 
of Educational Method. April, 1925. 

Sturt, Henry (editor). Personal Idealism, esp. Chapter II. New 
York, 1902. 








ON VALUES 


Ames, Edward 8. Psychology of Religious Experience. Boston, 
1910. 

Coe, George A. The Psychology of Religion. Chicago, 1916. 

Judd, Charles H. ‘(Doctrine of Attitudes,” art. Journal of 
Philosophy, V, 676-684. 

——, “Evolution of Consciousness,” art. Psychological Review, 
XVII, 77-97. 

King, Irving. The Development of Religion. New York, 1910. 

Urban, W. M. Valuation: Its Nature and Laws. London, 1919. 

» “Worth,” art. Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. 





ON THE CONCEPT OF DEMOCRACY 


Blackmar, F, W., and Gillin, J. L. Outlines of Sociology. New 
York, 1915. 

Bryce, James. Modern Democracies. 2 vols. New York, 1921. 

Carver, Thomas N. Essays in Social Justice. Cambridge, 1915. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 267 


Dealey, J. Q. Sociology: Its Development and Application. New 
York, 1920. ' 

De Toqueville, A. Democracy in America. New York, 1898. 

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. 

Erskine, John. Democracy and Ideals. New York, 1920. 

Follett, M. P. The New State. New York, 1920. 

Giddings, Franklin H. The Responsible State. Boston, 1918. 

Mallock, W. H. The Inmits of Pure Democracy. New York, 
1917. 

Park, R. E., and Burgess, E. W. Introduction to the Science of 
Sociology. Chicago, 1921. 

Ross, E. A. Principles of Sociology. New York, 1920. 


ON THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS 


Bury, J. B. The Idea of Progress. New York, 1920. 
Inge, Wiliam R. Outspoken Essays. New York, 1922. 
Todd, Arthur J. Theories of Social Progress. New York, 1918. 


ON MOTIVATION 


Bower, William C. ‘An Approach to the Reconstruction of the 
Curriculum of the School of Religion,” art. Religious Edu- 
cation. June, 1917. 

Dewey, John. Interest and Effort. Boston, 1913. 

Galloway, Thomas W. The Use of Motives in Teaching Moral? 
and Religion. Boston, 1918. 

Ikenberry, Charles S. Motives and Expression in Religious Euu- 
cation. New York, 1922. 

Wilson, H. B. and G. M. Motivation of School Work. Boston, 
1916. 

Wilson, G. M. ‘“‘Motivation vs. Fact Method in Teaching 
Geography,” art. Journal of Educational Method. Febru- 
ary, 1925. 


ON SUBJECT-MATTER 


Barr, A.S. ‘‘ Making the Course of Study,” I, I, arts. Journal 
of Educational Method. May and June, 1924. 

Dewey, John. The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago, 1902. 

, Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. 

Charters, W. W. Curriculum Construction. New York, 1923. 





268 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Kilpatrick, William H. ‘How Shall We Select the Subject- 
Matter for the Elementary Curriculum?” art. Journal of 
Educational Method. September, 1924. 

—, “Subject-Matter and the Educative Process,” I, II, arts. 
Journal of Educational Method. November, 1922, February, 
1923. 

Meriam, Junius L. Child Life and the Curriculum. Yonkers- 
on-Hudson, 1921. 


ON METHOD 


Baltzell, Edna M. ‘Project Method Promotes Original Ideas,” 
art. Journal of Educational Method. December, 1922. 
Barbour, Dorothy D. “The Case Against Standardization,” 

art. Religious Education. June, 1923. 

Betts, George H. How to Teach Religion. New York, 1919. 

, The Recitation. Boston, 1910. 

Coe, George A. A Social Theory of Religious Education. New 
York, 1917. 

Chassell, Joseph O. “Criteria for Improving the Educative 
Process,” art. Journal of Educational Method. April, 1925. 

Clark, Marion G. “The Direction of Classroom Teaching in 
the Use of the Project,” art. Journal of Educational Method. 
April, 1924. 

Courtis, S. A. “Teaching Through the Use of Projects,” art. 
Teachers College Record. March, 1920. 

Crowley, James A. “The Socialization of the School Program: 
I, The Socialized Recitation,” art. Journal of Educational 
Method. May, 1924. 

» “The Socialization of the School Program: II, Extra- 
curricular Activities,” art. Journal of Educational Method. 
June, 1924, 

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. 

Earhart, L. B. Types of Teaching. Boston, 1915. 

Edwards, Frances R. “The Place of the Project Method in 
Religious Education,” art. Journal of Educational Method. 
December, 1921. 

Goodrich, Bessie B. “Criteria for Judging the Value of Proj- 
ects,” art. Journal of Educational Method. May, 1922. 
Hahn, H. H. “The Case for Direct Learning,” art. Journal of 

Educational Method. December, 1923. 

Hall-Quest, Alfred L. ‘‘Method and the Educative Process,” 

art. Journal of Educational Method. November, 1928. 








BIBLIOGRAPHY 269 


Hartley, Gertrude. The Use of Projects in Religious Education. 
Philadelphia, 1921. 

Hayward, P. R. “Shall Our Pupils Receive or Participate ?”’ 
art. Church School. January, 1921. 

Hosic, James F. “Criteria of Success in Project Teaching,” art. 
Journal of Educational Method. April, 1923. 

» ‘The Project Method,” art. Journal of Educational Meth- 

od. June, 1923. 

, “The Réle of the Teacher in the Project Method,” I, IT, 
Ill, arts. Journal of Educational Method. December, 1922, 
January, February, 1923. 

——., “Types of Project and Their Technique,” art. Journal of 
Educational Method. March, 1923. 

» “What Is the Project Method?” I, IT, III, arts. Journal 
of Educational Method. September, October, November, 
1922. 

Hunter, F. M. “The Project Method—What Can Be Accom- 
plished in the Ordinary Classroom,” art. Journal of Educa- 
tional Method. November, 1922. 

Hunter, M. C. “A Self-Directing High-School Department,”’ 
art. Religious Education. August, 1919. 

Kilpatrick, William H. “A General View and Evaluation of 
Present Methods,” art. Religious Education. June, 1919. 

——, “Method and Curriculum,” J, II, arts. Journal of Educa- 
tional Method. April, May, 1922. 

—, “Mind-Set and Learning,” art. Journal of Educational 
Method. November, 1921. 

——, ‘“‘Psychological and Logical,” art. Journal of Educational 
Method. March, 1922. 

——, “The Wider Study of Method.” Journal of Educational 
Method. October, 1921. 

——, “What Is Method?” art. Journal of Educational Method. 
September, 1921. 

——, The Project Method. New York. 

Kilpatrick, William H. ef al. “Dangers and Difficulties of the 
Project Method and How to Overcome Them,” symposium. 
Teachers College Record. September, 1921. 

McMurry, Charles A. Elements of General Method. Blooming- 
ton, 1898, 

, Teaching by Projects. New York, 1920. 

McMurry, Charles A. and Frank M. Method of the Recitation. 
New York, 1911. 














270 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Mayer, Otto. “‘Developing Initiative in Young People’s Work,” 
art. Religious Education. April, 1923. 

Miller, Harry L. Directing Study. New York, 1922. 

Mudge, E. L. ‘“‘The Project Method in Religious Education,” 
art. Church School. November, 1922. 

O’Shea, M. V. Everyday Problems in Teaching. Indianapolis, 
1912. 

Owen, W. B. ‘“‘The Problem Method,” art. Journal of Educa- 
tional Method. January, 1922. 

Shaver, Erwin L. The Project Principle in Religious Education. 
Chicago, 1924. 

Starch, Daniel. Educational Psychology. New York, 1919. 

, Experiments in Educational Psychology. New York, 1917. 

Stevens, Julia D. “The New Method in Education,” art. 
Church School. October, 1920. 

Strayer, George D. A Brief Course in the Teaching Process. 
New York, 1912. 

Tallman, Lavinia. “New Types of Class Teaching,” art. Re- 
ligious Education. August, 1917. 

Thorndike, Edward L. The Principles of Teaching. New York, 

1911. 

» The Psychology of Learning. New York, 1913. 

——, Work and Fatigue: Individual Differenees. New York, 
1914. 

Tralle, Henry E. Dynamics of Teaching. New York, 1924. 
Waring, Ethel B. “The Educative Process in and out of School,” 
art. Journal of Educational Method. February, 1924. 
Watson, Goodwin B. “Do Projects Work?” art. Church School. 

August, 1924. 








ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION THROUGH SOCIAL 
PARTICIPATION 


Bower, William C. The Educational Task of the Local Church. 
St. Louis, 1921. 

Coe, George A. A Social Theory of Religious Education. New 
York, 1917. 

Cope, Henry F. Organizing the Church School. New York, 1923. 

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. 

——, The School and Society. Chicago, 1900. 

—, Evelyn. New Schools for Old. New York, 1919. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 271 


Dewey, John and Evelyn. Schools of Tomorrow. New York, 
1915. 

Johnston, Charles H., ef al. The Modern High School. New 
York, 1914. 

Maus, Cynthia P. Youth and the Church. Cincinnati, 1923. 

Meyers, A. J. W. “Plans that Have Promoted Co-operation 
Between the Home and the Church School,” art. Religious 
Education. April, 1923. 

Miller, Harry L. Directing Study. New York, 1922. 

Perry, A. C. Discipline as a School Problem. Boston, 1915. 

Reichard, L. F. “The School as a Project,” art. Religious 
Education. December, 1922. | 

Stone, Genevieve L. “An Experiment in Democracy,” art. 
Journal of Educational Method. February, 1923. 

Welton, J., and Blandford, F.G. Moral Training through School 
Discipline. Baltimore. 


ON THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSFER 


Bagley, W. C. The Educative Process. New York, 1914. 

Bolton, Frederick. Principles of Education. New York, 1910. 

Colvin, Stephen 8. The Learning Process. New York, 1914. 

Ruediger, W. C. The Principles of Education. Boston, 1910. 

Starch, Daniel. Educational Psychology. New York, 1919. 

Thorndike, Edward L. The Psychology of Learning. New York, 
1913. 


ON FREEDOM AND CONTROL 


Baldwin, J. Mark. The Individual and Society. Boston, 1911. 

Coe, George A. Law and Freedom in the School. Chicago, 1924. 

, What Ails our Youth? New York, 1924. 

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. 

Hosic, J. F. “The Réle of the Teacher in the Project Method,”’ 
I, I, I, arts. Journal of Educational Method. December, 
1922, January and February, 1923. 





ON ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 


Charters, W. W. Curriculum Construction. New York, 1923. 
Hartshorne, Hugh. ‘Co-operative Study of the Religious Life 
of Children,” art. Religious Education. December, 1921. 


Q72 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


ON INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 


Starch, Daniel. Educational Psychology. New York, 1919. 

Thorndike, Edward L. Mental and Social Measurements. New 
York, 1916. 

——, Work and Fatigue : Individual Differences. New York, 1924. 


ON STATISTICAL LAWS 


Elderton, W. P. and E. M. A Primer of Statistics. London, 
1914. 

King, W. I. Elements of Statistical Method. New York, 1916. 

Thorndike, Edward L. Mental and Social Measurements. New © 
York, 1916. 


ON THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF RELIGION 


Ames, Edward 8. The Psychology of Religious Experience. Bos- 
ton, 1910. 

Brinton, Daniel G. Religions of Primitive Peoples. New York, 
1897. 

Caird, Edward. The Evolution of Religion. 2 vols. New York, 
1893. 

Coe, George A. The Psychology of Religion. Chicago, 1916. 

Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life 
(Swain translation). London, 1915. 

Ellwood, Charles A. The Reconstruction of Religion. New 
York, 1922. . 

——, Religion and Social Science. New York, 1923. 

» ‘The Social Function of Religion,” art. American Journal 
of Sociology, XIX, 289-308. 

Foster, George B. The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle 
for Existence. Chicago, 1909. 

Galloway, George. The Principles of Religious Development. 
London, 1909. 

Hocking, William E. The Meaning of God in Human Experience. 
New Haven, 1912. 

Hoffding, Harold. Philosophy of Religion. London, 1906. 

Hopkins, E. W. The History of Religions. New York, 1918. 

, Origin and Evolution of Religion. New Haven, 1928. 

Hume, R. E. The World’s Living Religions. New York, 1924. 














BIBLIOGRAPHY 273 


James, William. Varieties of Religious Experience. New York, 
1902. 

Jastrow, Morris. The Study of Religion. New York, 1911. 

Jevons, F. B. An Introduction to the Study of Comparative Re- 
ligion. New York, 1912. 

Kauizsch, E. “The Religion of Israel,” art. Hastings’ Bible 
Dictionary. Extra volume. 

King, Irving. The Development of Religion. New York, 1910. 

Leuba, James H. Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion. 
London, 1909. 

—., A Psychological Study of Religion. New York, 1912. 

Lowie, Robert H. Primitive Religion. New York, 1924. 

Marett, R. R. Psychology and Folklore. New York, 1920. 

, The Threshold of Religion. New York, 1914. 

Martineau, James. A Study of Religion. Oxford, 1900. 

Menzies, Allen. History of Religion. New York, 1913. 

Moore, George F. The Birth and Growth of Religion. New York, 
1923. 

, History of Religions. 2 vols. New York, 1913, 1919. 

Patten, Simon N. The Social Basis of Religion. New York, 1911. 

Pratt, James B. The Psychology of Religious Belief. New York, 

1907. 

, The Religious Consciousness. New York, 1920. 

Sabatier, Auguste. Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion. New 
York, 1916. 

Starbuck, E. D. Psychology of Religion. New York, 1903. 

Stratton, George M. Psychology of the Religious Infe. London, 
1918. 

Strickland, Francis L. Psychology of Religious Experience. New 
York, 1924. 

Toy, G. H. Introduction to the Study of Religion. New York, 
1913. 

Webb, Clement C. Group Theories of Religion and the Individual. 
New York, 1916. 

Wright, W. K. A Student's Philosophy of Religion. New York, 
1922. 


ON THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION AND THE 
DEVELOPMENT OF MAN’S CULTURE 


Clodd, E. Primer of Evolution. New York, 1897. 
Dawson, Marshall. Nineteenth Century Evolution and After. 
New York, 1924. 











QA : BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Duckworth, W. L. H. Prehistoric Man. Cambridge, 1912. 

Haeckel, E. H. P. A. The Evolution of Man. New York, 1887. 

Haeckel, E. H. P. A., ef al. Evolution and Modern Thought. 
New York, 1917. 

Lull, R. S. The Evolution of the Earth. New Haven, 1918. 

Osborn, H. F. Men of the Old Stone Age. New York, 1919. 

, The Origin and Development of Infe. New York, 1921. 

Ratzell, F. History of Mankind. 3 vols. New York, 1898. 

Thompson, J. Arthur. The Outline of Science. 5 vols. New 
York, 1922. 





ON THINKING AND RATIONALIZING 


Dewey, John. How We Think. Boston, 1910. 
Robinson, James H. Mind in the Making. New York and Lon- 
don, 1921. 


ON EDUCATION AS RECONSTRUCTION 
Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. 


ON THE DOCTRINE OF CATHARSIS 


Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence. 2 vols. New York, 1905. 
Thorndike, Edward L. The Original Nature of Man. New 
York, 1913. 


SAMPLE ENTERPRISES 


In his The Project Principle in Religious Education, Chapter 
II, E. L. Shaver has described fourteen enterprises as used in 
the public schools. Part II is devoted entirely to the descrip- 
tion of seventy-seven enterprises as used in the church school. 

Experiments in enterprises in the church school are reported 
from time to time in Religious Education. 'These date, for the 
most part, from the beginning of 1922. 

Similar significant experiments in enterprises for the church 
school were reported from time to time in The Church School 
during the period of its publication. 

The most complete source for experiments in enterprises in 
the public school is to be found in The Journal of Educational 
Method, dating from the Se of its publication in Sep- 
tember, 1921. 


INDEX 


Adaptation: the form which ad- 
justment assumes, 80; active 
and passive, 48, 80; principle of, 
in curriculum making, 241 ff.; 
necessitated by individual differ- 
ences, 241 ff.; necessitated by 
group differences, 243 ff.; causes 
of differences, 245 ff.; requires a 
flexible curriculum, 247 ff. 

Adjustment: education defined as 
adjustment to subject-matter, 
19; a function of mental life, 44 
f.; initiative taken by persons, 


48, 74 ff., 80; to natural and so- © 


cial environment, 75 ff.; recipro- 
cal relation of man and his 
world, 78 ff.; determines one’s 
world, 80 f.; experience the re- 
sult of, 128 f.; knowledge the re- 
sult of, 128 f. 

Adults, 60, 68, 237 f. 

Alternatives in outcomes, 189 f. 

Analysis of experience, 180 ff.; a 
problem of research, 180; meth- 
ods of, 180 ff.; the questionnaire, 
181 f.; the personal interview, 
182; introspection, 182 f.; objec- 
tive observation, 183 ff.; job 
analysis, 184; types of observa- 
tion, 184 ff.; items for laboratory 
research, 188 ff. 

Annoyance, 88 f., 173. 

Antecedent and consequent, 53, 
98, 121, 155 ff., 219; ground for 
the reconstruction of experience, 
157; basis of responsibility, 157 
f.; an integrating bond in experi- 
ence, 155 ff. 

Anthropology, 25. 

Assignments, 64, 220. 

Attitudes: result of responses, 89; 
a part of the curriculum, 173, 
233, 256. 


275 


Backward-looking education, 14 f.; 
result of conceiving education as 
knowledge, 21; result of reca- 
pitulation theory, 32 f. 

Backward-looking religion, 257 f. 

Bacon, Francis, 6, 21, 50. 

Behaviorism, 44 ff.; mechanistic, 
45 f{., 87; purposive, 45 f., 87; 
availability of each type for re- 
ligious education, 87 f. 

Biology, 24. 

Bond, between situation and re- 
sponse, 85 ff.; mechanistic bonds, 
85; reflective-purposive, 85 f.; 
educational possibilities of each 
type, 86 f.; strengthened by sat- 
isfaction, 88 f.; weakened by an- 
noyance, 88 f. 

Butler, Nicholas Murray, 19. 


Catharsis, doctrine of, 28. 

Central tendencies in experience, 
189. 

Charters, W. W., 184. 

Child, the: centre of educational 
process, 3; knowledge substitut- 
ed for, 17; placed at centre by 
recapitulation theory, 30; has 
standing in own right, 68; the 
centre of programmes of social 
improvement, 68; the centre of 
community organization, 238 f.; 
attitude of to be carried into 
adult life, 68. 

China, education in, 14 f. 

Choice: based upon standards of 
value, 116; a determinant of be- 
havior, 87; essential to experi- 
ences for curriculum use, 166 f. 

Christian outcomes in conduct, 
190 f.; how to guarantee them, 
219 {, 


276 


Christian reaction against Greeco- 
Roman world, 57. 

Church, the, 230 f. 

Civilization, 120 f. 

Classics, the, 5, 6, 7, 58 f. 

Classroom procedure, 220 ff.; sug- 
gested type of, 222 ff 

Comenius, 6, 50. 

Common experience necessary, 249 


Common man, the, 5, 7, 21, 37 f., 
4A, 

Community, the, organized around 
interests of child, 238 ff. 

Continuity: principle of, 147 ff.; 
gives movement to experience, 
148; as special significance in re- 
ligious education, 150; inter- 
relatedness of experience, 153 ff.; 
antecedent and consequent in 
experience, 155 ff.; influence of a 
dominant purpose upon, 158 ff.; 
a necessary characteristic of ex- 
periences used in the curriculum, 
167 f., 219. 

Control: over nature, 2, 36, 40 ff.; 
of experience, 36, 47, 92 ff.; con- 
cept of, 95 ff.; external, 96 f.; 
through force, 96; through social 
pressure, 96; through prejudice, 
96; through habit, 96 f.; through 
selected facts, 9'7; co-operative, 
through guidance, 97 f.; not 
inconsistent with enrichment 
of experience, 98; factors in 
the control of experience, 99 
ff.; knowledge a control factor, 
128; teacher may exercise only 
through guidance, 218 f. 

Co-operation, 225; of teacher and 
learner, 218 f.; of adults and 
youth, 238. 

Correlation, Herbart’s doctrine of, 


Creative attitude of mind, 21, 33, 
47, 136, 225, 258 f. 

Culture epoch theory, 28 fi. 

Curriculum, the: at the centre of 
the educative process, 3 f.; 
changing conceptions of, 4; as 
discipline, 4 ff.; as knowledge, 13 
ff.; of primitive peoples, 14; as 


INDEX 


recapitulation, 24 ff.; as enriched 
and controlled experience, 25 ff.; 
backgrounds of this view, 36 ff.; 
antecedents of this view, 48 ff.; 
of what it consists, 163 ff.; as 
based upon selected and organ- 
ized experience, 36, 164 ff., 179; 
component elements of, 171 ff.; 
elements i in the situation, 172 f.; 
experience of the learner, 173 f.; 
experience of others, 174 f.; 
should provide basis for social 
life, 249 f.; should arrive some- 
where, 250 f.; should be un- 
dertaken experimentally, 251; 
should be dynamic, 252 ff.; 
should prepare for life in a 
changing world, 254; should 
create conditions of continuous 
growth, 254 f.; should take into 
account individual differences, 
247 ff.; objectives of, 254 ff. 
Customs, 1, 20, 25, 29, 76. 


Democracy: a dominant concept of 
modern thinking, 37; back- 
grounds of the idea, 37 f.; what 
is Involved in the concept, 38 f.; 
demands certain types of atti- 
tude and motive, 204 f. 

Desire: the right of the common 
man, 37; attached to ends, 46; 
repudiated during Middle Ages, 
57; a determinant of ends, 72 f.; 
selective influence upon environ- 
ment, 74; rational, 74; relation 
of to value, 74, 88, 94 f., 107 ff.; 
evaluation of, 74 f.; a motivator 
of activity, 61, 80, 144; the focal 
point for the remaking of human 
nature, 87, 111; the highest 
achievement of human nature, 
76, 111. 

Dewey, John, 51 f., 68, 103. 
Diary, personal, as a source for the 
discovery of experience, 182 f. 
Differences: individual, 241 ff.; 

group, 243 fi.; causes of, 245 ff. 

Disciplinary conception of the cur- 
riculum, 1 ff.; philosophy of, 7 
fic; centred in process of learn- 

‘ing, 9, 12; subjects appropriate 


INDEX 


to, 9 f.; influence of, 10 f.; de- 
fects of, 11 ff.; effect on spirit of 
school, 10. 

Discipline: involved in the enrich- 
ment and control of experience, 
53 f., 116 ff.; inherent in all pur- 
posive experience, 119, 171. 

Discrimination, a factor in the en- 
richment and control of experi- 
ence, 99 ff. 


Education: development of, 1 ff.; 
most fundamental undertaking 
in modern society, 2; changes in, 
3; passing through reconstruc- 
tion, 3, 4, 52 f.; primitive, 13 f., 
48; as formation, 16 f.; defined 
as adjustment to subject-matter, 
19; as unfolding, 24 ff.; in Egypt, 
14 f.; in China, 14 f.; as experi- 
ence, 51 ff.; as preparation, 60 f., 
65 f.; formalizing of, 61; as re- 
construction of experience, 51 f., 
68 f., 157; as propaganda, 218, 
256. 

Effort, education in, 14 f. 

Embryology, 25. 

Emotions, a special problem in re- 
ligious education, 145 f. 

Ends: activity directed toward, 46, 
62, 68, 88; to be gripping, must 
not be too remote, 62 f.; the ba- 
sis of reconstructing experience, 
68 f.; selective influence of, 69 f.; 
evoke activity, 72 f. 

Enrichment of experience: one 
form of redirection, 36; concept 
of, 92 ff.; through meaning, 93 f.; 
through worth, 94 f.; not incon- 
sistent with control, 98. 

Enterprises: the basis of school or- 
ganization, 233 ff.; should centre 
in expanding social relations and 
functions, 235 f. 

Environment: material, 75; the so- 
cial nature of, 75 ff.; influence of, 
QA5 f. 

Evolution, doctrine of, 25 f. 

Experience: as a basis of the curric- 
ulum, 35 ff., 164 ff.; antecedents 
of this view, 48 ff.; fundamental 
in moral and religious education, 


277 


55 £.; worth of present, 53, 57 ff.; 
medizeval view of, 57 f.; Renais- 
sance view of, 58 ff.; Reformation 
view of, 59 f.; individual quality 
of, 65, 81; social nature of, 38 f., 
75 £f., 249 ff.; reconstruction of, 
52, 54, 68 f£.; evaluation of, 69 f.; 
nature of, '72 ff.; a function of the 
self, '73 f£.; defined, 74; subordi- 
nate to the self, 74; result of ad- 
justment, 74 f.; determines one’s 
world, 80 f.; follows a situation- 
bond-response pattern, 82 ff.; 
dynamic nature of, 88, 253; ten- 
dency of to fall into modes, 89 f.; 
cumulative character of, 91; how 
enriched and controlled, 92 ff.; 
evaluation of, 99; types of, 99; 
factors that lead to its control, 
99 ff.; capacity to absorb knowl- 
edge, 115 f.; immediacy of, 185 
ff.; integration of, 147 ff.; inter- 
relatedness of, 153 ff.; not all of 
equal value, 164; qualities that 
render it available for curricu- 
lum use, 164 ff.; of the learner, a 
part of the curriculum, 173 f.; of 
others, a part of the curriculum, 
174 ff.; analysis of, 180 ff.; ge- 
netic, 196; results of substituting 
books for, 199 ff.; complex char- 
acter of, 252 f.; continually un- 
dergoing change, 253 f. 

Experimental nature of the learn- 
ing process, 124. 


Factors in the control of experi- 
ence, 99 ff.; discrimination, 99 ff.; 
reflective thinking, 102 ff.; valu- 
ation, 107 ff.; knowledge, 114 f.; 
the disciplined will, 116 ff. 

Faculty psychology: basis of the 
disciplinary conception of the 
curriculum, 8f.; displaced by 
Herbart, 16, 20. 

“Five formal steps in teaching,” 
17 f., 207 ff.; criticism of, 209. 
Formalizing of education, the, 61. 
**Formation”’ of the mind, 16, 17, 

68. 
Forward-looking religion, 257 f. 


Q78 


Forward-looking type of mind, 47, 
Q57 f. 

Freud, 27. 

Functional view: of the mind, 44 
ff.; of mtelligence, 52; of knowl- 
edge, 127 f. 


“General method,” 210. 

Geology, 24. 

God: child’s relation to, 237; a 
member of the Christian com- 
munity, 237; a Creator of values, 
259. 

Greeks, education of, 48 f. 

Group differences, 243 ff.; racial, 
243 f.; occupational, 244; geo- 
graphical, 244; sectarian, 244 f.; 
significance for curriculum, 247 


Growth: supposed “key” to, 26; 
““stages”’ of, 27, 29, 31; empha- 

. sized by recapitulatory theory, 
28, 31; the necessity of educa- 
tion, 54; the end of education, 
54; makes reconstruction of ex- 
perience possible, 54; Renais- 
sance and Reformation views of, 
60 f.; to be interpreted posi- 
tively, 54, 67 f.; results of nega- 
tive views of, 61 f.; conditions of 
continuous growth, 68, 254 f. 

Guidance, 97 f. 


Habit: the result of strengthening 
bonds, 89; a form of self-control, 
89 f.; need of flexibility of, 67 f., 
90 f.; a form of external control, 
96 f.; a step in method, 210, 256. 

Hebrews, the, history of, 200 fi. 

Herbart: formulator of the concep- 
tion of the curriculum as knowl- 
edge, 13; views of, 15 ff.; influ- 
ence of, 19 f., 209; criticism of 
position of, 20 f. 

Heredity: strongly accentuated by 
recapitulatory theory, 27, $2; in- 
fluence upon differences, 245. 

Historical subject-matter: 2, 52, 
174 ff., 191 f., 194 ff.; a record of 
racial experience, 194 f.; its 
value, 195 f.; its form, 196 ff.; 


INDEX 


cumulative character of, 197; 
systematized, 197 f.; symbolic, 
198; gives rise to major educa- 
tional problem, 198 ff.; a means, 
199; source material, 199; vital- 
izing it, 199; of varying educa- 
tional value, 200 ff.; correspon- 
dence with present experience, 
200; varies with ethical and re- 
ligious levels upon which it origi- 
nated, 200 f., 204 f.; approxima- 
tion to ideals of Jesus, 206, 214 
jae A We 1 

History, 195. 

Human nature: disciplinary views 
of, 7 f.; Herbart’s view of, 19; re- 
capitulatory view of, 28 f., 33; 
reconstruction of, 87, 111. 

Humanism, 5. 


Ideals: affect the highest order of 
bond, 87; determinants in be- 
havior, 87; selective influence of, 
89 f.; an expression of standards 
of value, 116 f.; a part of the cur- 
riculum, 173 f. 

Immediacy of experience, 135 f. 

Individual differences: to be sought 
in experience, 189; character of, 
241 ff.; range of, 241; distribu- 
tion of, 242; causes of, 245 ff.; 
significance of for the curricu- 
lum, 247 ff. 

Industrialization of society, 37. 

Initiative, 175 f., 224. 

Institutions, 76, 134. 

Integration of experience: relation 
of to personality, 147 f.; nature 
of, 147 ff.; bond of in the mind, 
148 ff.; a primary aim in educa- 
tion, 150; relation of religion to, 
150 ff.; bonds of, 153 ff.; a neces- 
sity, 251. 

Intelligence: an instrument of ad- 
justment, 44 f.; the directive fac- 
ey in experience, 52, 125 ff., 156 


Interest: the bond that unites per- 
sons and ends, 61, 144; loss of 
_ when learning is dissociated 
from experience, 61, 144; Her- 


INDEX 


bart’s doctrine of, 17; relation to 
value, 61. 
Interrelatedness of experience, 153 


Introspection as a method of dis- 
covering experiences, 182 f. 

Isolation: of learning from experi- 
ence, effect of, 144, 199; of reli- 
gion from experience, effect of, 
138 f., 143 f. 


Jesus: His discrimination regard- 
ing ethical and religious levels, 
203 f.; the supreme criterion of 
historical subject-matter in the 
curriculum of religious educa- 
tion, 206. 

Job analysis, 184. 


Kingdom of God, 227, 230, 232, 
252. 

Knowledge: curriculum largely 
concerned with, 13; placed at 
centre of the curriculum by the 
Herbartians, 17, 20; conception 
of the curriculum as knowledge, 
13 ff.; antecedents of this view, 
13 f.; influence of this concep- 
tion, 19 f., 23; criticism of this 
conception, 20 f.; influence of the 
sciences upon knowledge con- 
cept of the curriculum, 21 f.; 
what knowledge is of most 
worth, 22 f.; relation of to prac- 
tical activities, 41 f.; relation of 
to the curriculum, 52, 54; effec- 
tive retention of, 64 f.; a deposit 
of experience, 91; a factor of con- 
trol, 114 f.; origin and function 
of, 120 ff.; as meaning, 120 ff.; 
essentially dynamic, 121 f.; can- 
not be imparted apart from 
shared experience, 122 f.; chiefly 
the result of trial and error 
method, 123 f.; essentially ex- 
perimental, 124 f.; a factor of 
control, 125 ff.; leads to progress, 
126; makes available the experi- 
ence of the race, 126 f.; validated 
in experience, 128 ff., 141 f.; eri- 
teria for judging worth of, 130 
ff.; to what extent of value for its 


279 


own sake, 132 f.; consequences 
when imparted apart from ex- 
perience, 143 ff.; absorbed by 
experience, 168 f.; genetic, 196. 


Language, written, effect upon ed- 
ucation, 1, 14, 143. 

Learner’s experience, a part of the 
curriculum, 173 ff., 213 f., 216 f. 

Learning, a social process, 227 ff. 

Leisure, 41. 

Listing of experiences, 188 f. 

Locke, John, 7. 


Meaning, 68, 73, 74, 98, 120 ff., 
128. 

Method: in primitive education, 1, 
48; of Herbart, 17 f.; emphasis 
upon, in knowledge curriculum, 
20f.; more than improvement of, 
needed, 192 f.; conceived as 
widening experience, 207 ff., 210 
f.; determined by relation of 
knowledge to experience, 207 f.; 
the “five formal steps” of the 
Herbartians, 17, 207 ff.; a new 
series of steps required in dealing 
with experience, 210 ff.; “gen- 
eral” and “‘special” method, 
210; of learner as distinguished 
from that of teacher, 211 ff.; 
procedure in classroom, 220 ff. 

Middle Ages: spirit of, 4 f., 8; ori- 
gin of general viewpoint of, 57 
f.; view of, concerning human 
nature, 8; view of, concerning 
the worth of present experience, 
57 f.; reaction from, in Renais- 
sance and Reformation, 58 f. 

Mind, functional view of, 44 f. 

Mission lands, curricula for, 248 f. 

Montaigne, 6, 50. 

Montessori, 51. 

Motivation: loss of when learning 
is dissociated from experience, 
61 f., 144; by the use of extrane- 
ous incentives, 144. 


Natural sciences, influence of upon 
the curriculum, 21 ff. 
Naturalism, an interest of the Ren- 


280 


aissance, 5, 6; the precursor of 
modern science, 22. 
Naturalistic movement in educa- 
tion, 50 f. 
Negation of the worth of present 
experience, 57 ff.; results of, 61 
ff. 


Objective observation as a method 
of securing experiences, 184 ff.; 
of homogeneous groups, 184 f.; of 
typical individuals, 186 f.; of 
promiscuous experiences, 187. 

Old Testament, religion of, 201 ff. 

Openmindedness, 92, 256. 

Original nature, 8, 26 f., 28, 31, 
245. 


Pansophic ideal, 21 f. 

Personality: appears as contmuum 
of experience, 46; as achieve- 
ment, 47; orders of, 147 f.; rela- 
tion of integration of experience 
to, 147 f.; organized around a 
set of values, 147; dual, 147 f.; 
realized through experience, 72. 

Persons: centre of the educative 
process, 25 f.; result of self-reali- 
zation, 25 f.; centre of primary 
emphasis in democracy, 38 f., 
46; nature of, 72 ff.; dynamic 
quality of, 72 f., 74, 80; realize 
Saray through experience, 
73 f. 

Personal interview as a method of 
discovering experiences, 182. 

Pestalozzi, 15, 51, 60. 

Philosophy, 36, 42, 44, 152, 195. 

Points of emphasis in the curricu- 
lum, 190 f. 

Practical activities in relation to 
peer and knowledge, 41 f., 


adie 42 {.; a democratic 
philosophy, 44, 61. 

Prayer, 237. 

Preparation: education viewed as, 
60 f.; failure of formal education 
to secure, 65 f.; not excluded by 
the conception of the worth of 
present experience, 70 f.; best 
secured through training in ex- 


INDEX 


pected activities, 65 f., 210 f., 
231 ff. 

Present, the: the focal point in ex- 
perience, 66 f.; the nexus be- 
tween the past and the future, 
70 f.; worthful on its own ac- 
count, 57 ff.; its enrichment by 
reference to past and future, 66, 
71. 

Primitive man: his method of 
learning, 13 f.; education of, 14, 
438 


Progress: early, slow, 15; result of 
experience in control, 126; a 
dominant passion of the modern 
mind, 126. 

Psychoanalysis, 188 f. 

ose: an approach to the inter- 
pretation of behavior, 46; an es- 
sential factor of the higher bond, 
85 f.; a determinant of behavior, 
87 f., 118 f.; the focal point in 
the reconstruction of human na- 
ture, 87; function of in experi- 
ence, 158 ff.; an integrating bond 
in experience, 158 ff.; gives direc- 
tion to experience, 158 f.; is se- 
lective in its influence, 159; de- 
termines sequence, 160; renders 
experience cumulative, 161. 


Questionnaire, the, as a method of 
discovering experiences, 181 f. 


Rationalizing, 105 f. 

“Readiness,” principle of, 89. 

Realism: earliest, 6, 22; social, 49 
f.; sense, 6, 49 f. 

Reality: principle of, 134 ff.; 
grounds of sense of, in religious 
ideas, 135 ff.; relation to imme- 
diacy of experience, 135 ff.; rela- 
tion to the whole of life, 138 f.; 
relation of, to the effectiveness of 
ideas, 139 f.; relation of, to domi- 
nant purpose, 143; loss of the 
sense of, 143. 

Recapitulation: recapitulatory 
theory of the curriculum, 24 ff.; 
backgrounds of, 24 ff.; the the- 
-ory stated, 25 ff.; influence of, 


INDEX 


30; criticism of, 30 ff.; view of 
concerning human nature, 33. 
Reciprocal relation of man and his 

world, 78 ff. 

Recitations: a part of the technic 
of transmitting knowledge, 64; 
not appropriate to the experi- 
ence curriculum, 220 f. 

Reconstruction of experience: the 
basis of education, 36, 52, 68 f.; 
based upon continuity of experi- 
ence, 155 ff. 

Reflective thinking: a factor in the 
control of experience, 102 ff.; the 
conditions under which it takes 
place, 103 f. 

Reformation, the: view of, con- 
cerning worth of experience, 5, 
59 f.; relation of to Renaissance, 
6 f., 58; reaction from the Mid- 
dle Ages, 58 ff.; spirit of, 5, 59. 

Religion: centres in values, 111 ff.; 
a unifier of experience, 111 ff., 
150 ff.; may become departmen- 
talized, 130; results of depart- 
mentalization of, 138 f.; social, 
229 fi., 250. 

Renaissance, the: reaction from 
Middle Ages, 58; two fundamen- 
tal interests of, 5, 17, 58 f.; rela- 
tion of, to the Reformation, 6 f., 
58; view of, concerning worth of 
experience, 58 ff. 

Repression, results of, 27. 
Research as a method for the dis- 
covery of experiences, 180 ff. 

Response, 83 f. 

Responsibility: based upon antece- 
dent-consequent relation of ex- 
perience, 157 f., 219; developed 
through self-determination, 222, 
225; the responsible mind, 21, 
257. 

Rousseau, 50 f. 


Satisfaction, 73; effects of upon re- 
sponse, 88 f.; the basis of values, 
88. 

Schedules in relation to the experi- 
ence curriculum, 179. 

School, the: a formal institution, 
61; a selective and controlled en- 


281 


vironment, 52, 226; a society, 
52; a religious community, 227 
ff., 233; organized around enter- 
prises, 52, 233 ff. 

Science: Bacon a precursor of, 6, 
21, 22, 58; a nineteenth century 
phenomenon, 24 ff.; influence of, 
upon curriculum, 21 f.; methods 
of, 40 f.; a refined use of the trial 
and error method, 124; its meth- 
od of testing reality of coinci- 
dences, 140 f.; works through 
antecedent-consequent relation 
of experience, 156 f. 

Self, the: potential, 35, 39; a be- 
coming, 35, 73; the organizing 
eentre of experience, 35, 72 f.; 
emerges from the adjustment 
process, 39; gives meaning and 
worth to experience, 73 f.; sub- 
ject to disintegration, 73; takes 
the initiative in the adjustment 
process, 74 f., 80; realized 
through experience, 73 f. 

Self-realization: its relation to per- 
sonality, 35, 73; the central fact 
in the educative process, 35; a 
dominant modern concept, 37, 
39 f.; involved in the concept 
of democracy, 38 f.; an out- 
growth of purposive behavior, 
46; achieved through experience, 
35 {., 73 f., 92 f., 97 f.; achieved 
in a social medium, 47, 98; 
achieved through realization of 
desires, 74; not inconsistent with 
guidance, 98. 

Sense-perception, 16. 

Situation and response: situation 
defined, 82 f.; response defined, 
83 fi.; the nature of the bonds 
uniting situation and response, 
85 ff.; situation a part of the cur- 
riculum, 172 f., 212 f., 215 f. 

Social character of Christianity, 
229 f.; social function of, 231. 

Social character of experience, 35, 
39, 47, 53, 76, 81, 92, 249 f. 

Social character of the environ- 
ment, 75 ff. 

Social character of the learning 
process, 53, 227 f. 


282 


Social inheritance, the, 75 f.; influ- 
ence of, 246 f. 

Social participation: as a means of 
religious education, 226 ff.; in 
the school as a religious commu- 
nity, 227 f.; social nature of the 
learning process, 227 ff.; social 
character of Christianity, 229 ff.; 
preparation for life in the 
church, 230 f.; social function of 
Christianity, 230. 

Social relations, the core of the 
curriculum, 234 ff. 

Social sciences, their influence 
upon the curriculum, 21 ff. 

“Soft pedagogy,” 64. 

“*Special method,” 210. 

Spencer, Herbert: brought natural 
and social sciences together, 22 
f.; raised question as to what 
knowledge is of most worth, 22 f. 

Spiritual engineering, 259. 

Split mind, resulting from dissocia- 
tion of ideas from experience, 
144 f. 

Statistical treatment of experience, 
190 f. 

Steps in teaching: the “five formal 
steps’”’ of the Herbartians, 17 f., 
207 ff.; steps necessary in secur- 
ing the enrichment and control 
of experience, 209 f. 

Subject-matter: Herbart’s idea of, 
16 f.; primary place in Herbart’s 
thinking, 19; historical subject- 
matter, 2, 52, 174 ff., 191 f., 194 
ff.; of what it consists, 194; a 
record of racial experience, 194 
f.; its value, 195 f.; its form, 196 
ff.; of varying educational value, 
20 ff.; inseparable from situa- 
tions, 226; inseparable from 
method and organization, 226 f. 


Teacher, the: place of in knowledge 
curriculum, 20; method of as dis- 
tinguished from that of the 
learner, 211 ff.; function of, 211 
ff., 215, 217; position of in group 
of learners, 221 f.; Herbartian- 


INDEX 


ism placed undue emphasis 
upon, 20 f. 

“Telling,” 122 f., 136 f. 

Text-book, 179, 195, 199. 

Thinking: conditions that give rise 
to, 102 ff.; a factor of control, 
105; distinguished from ration- 
alizing, 105 f.; emphasis upon 
thinking should be central, 21, 
52, 224. 

Thorndike, Edward L., 145, 241. 

Tolerance, 256. 

Traditions, weight of in knowledge 
curriculum, 20 f., 31; deteriorat- 
ing effect of, 13, 136 f., 194. 

Transfer of training: doctrine stat- 
ed, 8 f.; discredited by modern 
education, 11 f.; conditions un- 
der which transfer occurs, 11 f.; 
a false basis of religious educa- 
tion, 231 f. 

Trial and error method, character- 
istic of early experience, 91; 
method of science, 124; the fun- 
damental pattern of learning, 
123 f. 

Truth: new approach to discovery 
of, 42 f.; experimental nature of, 
43; an instrument for the control 
of experience, 43; validated in 
experience, 42 ff., 128 ff., 141 f.; 
vital conception of, 43, 141 f., 
255 f.; time element in judging, 
129. 

Types of experience, 99. 


Unity of the mind, the, advocated 
by Herbart, 16. 


Valuation, a factor in the control 
of experience, 107. 

Value: the source of motivation, 
46, 61 f.; standard for criticism 
of experience, 69; a source of the 
enrichment of experience, 94 f.; 
a factor of control, 107; the cen- 
tre of the reconstruction of hu- 
man nature, 87; conditions un- 
der which the sense of value 
arises, 107 ff.; criticism of, 109; 
relation to desire, 88, 111 ff.; 
centre of religion, 111; a ground 


INDEX 283 


of vitality in religious ideas, 185; | Widening experience as method, 
the organizing centre of person- 210 f. 
ality, 35, 147; undergoing con- William of Occam, 106. 


tinuous reconstruction, 253 f. Worth of present experience, 53, 57 
Vitality of religious ideas depen- ff.; viewpoint of Middle Ages, 57 
dent on reality and worth, 134 f. f.; view of the Renaissance, 58 


ff.; view of the Reformation, 58 
What knowledge is of most worth, ff.; does not preclude idea of 
11, 23; bearing of upon present preparation, 70 f. 
experience, 130 f.; relevancy to 
future experience, 131 f. Youth movement, the, 238. 








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